Smuel Barber - Complete Songs

Samuel Barber

Complete Songs

Includes
Night Wanderers;
Three Songs Op. 2;
Three Songs Op. 10;
Four Songs Op. 13;
 Dover Beach Op. 3; & Hermit Songs Op. 29


    Cheryl Studer (soprano)
    Thomas Hampson (baritone)
    John Browning (piano)
    Emerson String Quartet



Review

Artistic Quality: 10
Sound Quality: 10

Samuel Barber’s songs formed a central part of his output from an early age. They are characterized by natural, unselfconscious lyricism and a highly developed feeling for atmosphere. DG’s highly acclaimed two-CD set–originally issued in 1994 and repackaged here at mid-price–is the only compendium of these works you’re ever likely to need. It presents all of the songs in chronological order, performed by soprano Cheryl Studer and baritone Thomas Hampson with pianist John Browning. What is probably Barber’s best-known vocal setting–Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach–features the Emerson String Quartet.

It would be hard to contemplate any of the songs sung better than they are here. Studer has the vocal equipment required to deliver Barber’s many floating high phrases with complete assurance. Some listeners may feel that Hampson brings an even wider range of expressivity and color, especially evident in the subtlety of his enunciations, made more telling by his outstanding breath control. Studer is no less lacking in conviction, however, and gives particularly bewitching accounts of the earliest of Barber’s songs, “A Slumber Song of the Madonna”, and of the Op. 29 set of Hermit Songs (a highlight being the atmospheric “Church Bell at Night”). Hampson’s Dover Beach, though, is in a class by itself, and the performances of the valedictory James Joyce and Robert Graves settings (Despite and Still Op. 41) are similarly outstanding.