The Album
This album gathers four cornerstone works of Samuel Barber (1910-1981) in the landmark performances by Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, the most tireless champions of American orchestral music of their era. The Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, a compressed one-movement work in which a scherzo, slow movement and finale grow organically out of the opening themes, was premiered in Rome in 1936 under Bernardino Molinari and revised for its 1944 New York Philharmonic premiere under Bruno Walter; it announced Barber as a major symphonist while he was still in his twenties. The Overture to 'The School for Scandal', Op. 5, was Barber's graduation piece from the Curtis Institute, written when he was 21 and winner of the 1933 Bearns Prize - a brilliantly paced concert overture that became his first work to enter the repertoire. The Medea Suite, Op. 23, derives from the 1946 ballet 'The Serpent Heart' commissioned by Martha Graham, later revised as 'Cave of the Heart'; its suite of seven mythological episodes shows Barber's more astringent, dramatic side. The Adagio for Strings, arranged from the slow movement of the String Quartet, Op. 11, was given its immortal 1938 premiere by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony and has become the defining American elegy, played at the funerals of presidents and in moments of national mourning. Hanson, director of the Eastman School of Music and founder of its Festivals of American Music, premiered and recorded more American music than any conductor of his generation, and his Mercury Living Presence series with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra remains a reference document of mid-century American orchestral art. These Barber recordings, among the earliest and most authoritative of these works, were central in fixing the Barber canon for the LP era and remain interpretive benchmarks decades later.
The Label
This copy carries the lilac/light-purple Mercury 'Golden Imports' label with the oval Mercury logo, 'Golden Imports' script banner, boxed ELECTRONIC STEREO field, and 'MADE IN HOLLAND' under the catalog number; the rim text is the standard 1970s Phonogram International 'All rights of the producer... unauthorised copying, hiring, lending...' formula. Golden Imports was Phonogram Holland's mid-1970s budget reissue line (SRI-75xxx numbers, c. 1973-78) licensing US Mercury Living Presence classics for the European market, so this is a licensed Dutch reissue, not a US Mercury pressing. The label asterisk on 'Medea Suite, Op. 23*' tied to the 'STEREO*' box marks the Medea as genuine stereo (from the 1958 SR 90428 stereo masters) while the rest is electronically re-channeled mono - matching the back-cover disclaimer 'Electronically altered to simulate stereo' and the line 'Previously released as SR 90428, MG 50148, and MG 50075'. That places this 1974 compilation two full generations below the 1955/1958 US Living Presence originals in the pressing hierarchy.
Fidelity
The sources are the celebrated Mercury Living Presence Eastman Theatre sessions - single-point microphone recordings engineered by C. Robert Fine under producer Wilma Cozart - but this pressing presents three of the four works in electronically simulated stereo, which smears the famously clean mono Living Presence imaging; only the Medea Suite is genuine stereo. Dutch Phonogram/Baarn pressing quality of the era is quiet and well-centered, and Discogs users rate this as 'one of the better Golden Imports pressings,' but it is still a budget reissue cut from reprocessed masters. In the fidelity hierarchy it sits well below the US mono originals (MG 50075 / MG 50148) and the 1958 stereo SR 90428, which are the reference pressings collectors seek; the modern Mercury Living Presence audiophile reissues cut from original tapes (Speakers Corner and Analogue Productions series, where the Hanson titles appear) likewise outrank it. Buy this copy for the repertoire cheaply, not for the sound.
