Amid all the flurry of attention directed at Chopin and Mahler this year (neither of whom frankly needs the extra exposure an anniversary brings), spare a thought for Samuel Barber who was born 100 years ago in 1910 (and died in 1981). If you like beautiful melodies, subtle, elegant orchestration and a real mastery of mid-size forms (though he was quite capable of working on a larger canvas), then few 20th-century composers deliver more – and with more charm – than Barber. After a period when an admiration for Barber’s music was something at best noted with a sneer, it’s now – thankfully – okay to come out as a Barberphile! A website from, slightly surprisingly, France does Barber proud in this, his centenary year. Created by Pierre Brévignon, author of a forthcoming book on Barber, samuelbarber.fr/eng/welcome, contains a nicely succinct biography (also downloadable as a PDF), a chronological work list and a work list by genre, a discography that divides the interpreters into the “Founders” (Leontyne Price, John Browning and so on), the “Heirs” (David Zinman, Michael Tilson Thomas et al) and the “Young Generation” (including the splendid Barber series on Naxos conducted by Marin Alsop) – and it’s impressively up-to-date. There’s also a listing of performances of Barber’s music around the world from which I was slightly surprised to learn that Night Flight only received its French premiere in January 2009 (the information is a tad out-of-date here!). There’s also information about Capricorn, the French Samuel Barber Society, an organisation established in February 2009 in Paris by Pierre Brévignon, with five honorary members: composers John Corigliano and Nicolas Bacri, musicologist Henry-Louis de la Grange, radio producer Anne-Charlotte Rémond and conductor Jean-Pierre Marty. Incidentally, if you are an admirer of Barber’s music look out for our own Peter Dickinson’s Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute due from Rochester University Press later this spring. As a tribute in Barber Year, my download choice this month is a guide to essential Barber recordings available digitally. If you’ve not yet visited the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall may I commend the concerts that will be streamed during February? Sir Simon Rattle conducts a cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos with Mitsuko Uchida as the soloist, alongside the first four Sibelius symphonies. On February 4, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto sits alongside Sibelius’s First Symphony and two works by Ligeti (Atmosphères and Mysteries of the Macabre). On February 10, the Second and Third Beethoven concertos sit alongside Sibelius’s Third Symphony. On Valentine’s Day, Kurtág’s Grabstein für Stephan is followed by Sibelius’s Fourth and the Emperor Concerto. And on February 20, Ligeti’s San Francisco Symphony is coupled with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Sibelius’s Second. Of course, actually being there would be terrific but the next best thing is a ringside seat (or two or three) courtesy of the Berlin Phil’s high-definition cameras. As I’ve said before, this is a wonderfully sophisticated way to go to Berlin’s Philharmonie (a place worth a visit just for the building) and hear some of the world’s greatest musicians at work – and few orchestras play with the palpable sense of commitment of this surprisingly youthful ensemble. And the combination of Rattle’s way with Sibelius and that wonderfully concentrated sound the Berlin Phil makes I’m sure will add up to an experience worth sampling. To attend a Berliner Philharmoniker concert in their home at the Philharmonie simply log onto dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de/ and for €39 you could buy a 30-day pass which would get you all the February concerts and also give you access to the entire concert archive. Or for €9.90 you could attend a single concert. I must thank Rob Cowan for sharing his enthusiasm for a recent Pristine Classical download release of Beethoven’s Sixth and Seventh Symphonies from the Detroit Symphony and Paul Paray. If you thought that authentic metronome markings were ushered in by Roger Norrington in the 1980s, think again – here Paray gives us two wonderfully vivid performances of which the Seventh has thrills aplenty, and a finale that goes like the clappers! The Mercury recording sounds terrific in this transfer by Andrew Rose – if you only ever thought of Paray as an unparalleled conductor of lighter French fare (a kind of Gallic Beecham) then prepare to have your preconceptions well and truly changed. Incidentally, Pristine has also added a recording that couples the first two Beethoven symphonies with Mozart’s Haffner (recordings from 1959). Amazing to think that music-making like this was going on just as Motown was about to burst from this mid-Western city! Since its launch before Christmas, Hyperion’s new site has continued to impress me (and feedback from friends has been equally enthusiastic). I’ve just downloaded one of Hyperion’s January releases – an album of choral works by Einojuhani Rautavaara sung by the Schola Cantorum of Oxford directed by James Burton. It’s music of wonderful variety – in the Lorca settings the fusion of the vivid Spanish words and Rautavaara’s gloriously Finnish cool make real sparks fly – especially when performed as characterfully as here. And the recording, made in Exeter College Chapel in Oxford, is spectacularly vivid (producer: Adrian Peacock; engineer: Andrew Mellor). Having been going through a bit of a Rautvaara phase – prompted by hearing his Cantus Arcticus on BBC Radio 3 after a long gap – it was good to be reminded of another entirely different sound-world that this wonderful composer has mastered magnificently. And with downloadable booklet notes, the whole Hyperion experience is now there on my laptop whenever I feel the need to listen to this music (hyperion-records.co.uk). Incidentally, if you are feeling up to a re-acquaintance with the Cantus Arcticus – or even a first encounter – let me suggest the BIS recording over the Naxos because not only are the bird-sounds much more vivid on the BIS but the recording has so much more atmosphere – and the Naxos version is pretty fine too. Both, incidentally, are available to listen to on Spotify if you fancy sampling them. Congratulations to Naxos and its download site, classicsonline.com, for securing the download award at this Midem Classical Awards in Cannes last month. Through its distribution arm, Naxos has access to a huge number of recordings from a host of different labels and this site is a splendid place to look for your music. What I like especially – and can’t understand why other sites don’t try this – is to bundle up recordings under a specific theme (like string quartets or classical symphonies). Too many sites are still wedded to the CD’s presentation and also to its constrictions, whereas the digital domain gives the opportunity to do whatever you like! I’d love to see other stores making some imaginatively compiled collections that make use of the freedom offered out there in cyber-space! The Essential Download Playlists No 31: Samuel Barber at 100 Adagio for strings Baltimore SO / Zinman (Argo) iTunes & classicsandjazz.co.uk Essays for orchestra St Louis SO / Slatkin (EMI) iTunes Violin Concerto Ehnes; Vancouver SO / Tovey (Onyx) iTunes & eMusic Piano Concerto Prutsman; RSNO / Alsop (Naxos) iTunes & eMusic & classicsonline.com Symphonies Detroit SO / N Järvi (Chandos) iTunes & classicalshop.net & classicsonline.com Piano Sonata Browning (Phoenix) iTunes & eMusic Dover Beach Allen; Endellion Qt (Virgin Classics) iTunes Songs Studer; Hampson; Browning (DG) iTunes & DG Webshop Songs Finley; Drake (Hyperion) iTunes & Hyperion Vanessa Slatkin (Chandos) iTunes & classicalshop.net & classicsonline.com