Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings op. 11, performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester under the baton of its principal conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Recorded live at the Kölner Philharmonie on February 26, 2021.
Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings op. 11
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Cristian Măcelaru, conductor
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○ Introduction to the work
During Samuel Barber's own funeral in New York on January 23, 1981, it did not sound: his Adagio for strings, which, apart from the funeral march genre, is probably the most popular funeral music. Many famous personalities were buried to its sounds: Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Albert Einstein. It also continues to play a major role in the media treatment of horrific events such as 9/11. And of course, the Adagio also appears regularly in films when melancholy or sad images are involved.
A simple melody that seems to spin on into eternity in a painful and breathlessly condensing event: that makes Barber's Adagio the "saddest classical piece" of all time. At least that is what the listeners of the BBC, who were allowed to decide on it in 2004, felt. It is a piece of beguiling, timeless beauty and sublime seriousness.
For Barber, his best-known work was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it made him famous. A curse, because it made him a one-hit wonder. The fact that the American composer also wrote three operas, two symphonies and a violin concerto - who cares today? Even the work from which he tore his Adagio in 1938 in order to arrange it for string orchestra for a concert by the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini is heard extremely rarely: his String Quartet op. 11, in which the Adagio is surrounded by two fast movements. He composed the quartet in 1936 as a scholarship student in Rome.
Compared to the string quartet, in which the Adagio naturally sounds more sparse, more rational, the later arrangement virtually revels in the colorfully enriched sound of the string orchestra. The dragging tempo, the sighing theme that wanders through all the voices, the calm, undulating curve of increase without contrasts that culminates in spherical heights, the dark grounding by recumbent tones - all this does its part to move people to tears.
(Text: Verena Großkreutz)
28 авг 2024
