Samuel Barber's music has been around for most of our lives (his dates are 1910-81), but he has not imposed himself on our musical consciousness in the way that his contemporaries Messiaen and Tippett have. Yet the immense popularity of the Adagio for strings tells us that in certain moods he could speak to a wide audience, while his Piano Sonata of 1949 has won a respected place in the repertory. He is undoubtedly among music's conservatives (and surely there's a place for them in our fragmenting culture), who has been described variously as one who tried to escape from romanticism and one ''who never wanted to: his music is always primarily an expression of personal emotion''. He was also unusual among twentieth-century composers in being a trained singer, and once said that when setting words he ''let the music flow out of them''.
Of the two works here, it is The lovers which is most obviously romantic in that the texts, set here in a convincing English translation, are warmly erotic. But the Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954) also offers music of considerable passion, to words by the Danish philosopher whom Barber called ''an exciting and enigmatic intellectual force''. Thus its hushed opening plea for rest quickly rises to a fervent outburst. There are four prayer settings, well contrasted in mood and with a powerful orchestral interlude before the last: these are beautifully laid out for voices and orchestra, and Andrew Schenk and his various forces perform with conviction and skill. Indeed, Barber couldn't be in better hands than those of this conductor, who has specialized in his music. I find Sarah Reese's diction a little too American-sounding, but she has the right intensity.
The lovers should prove still more of a revelation to those who think Barber essentially mild-mannered, for there's nothing prim about this music to sensual peasant texts, written when the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-73) was 20. Indeed, the Philadelphia bank who commissioned it in 1971 raised their eyebrows at lines like ''Strip off your clothes'' and ''Oh the roses of the pubis!'', but Barber tells us that he was understood when he ''asked mildly if they didn't have love affairs in Philadelphia and learned that they did''. Yet as Philip Huscher argues in his useful note, musically its lyrical language seemed terribly anachronistic to some people when it was first heard in 1971. Today, people with open minds can see it as a work of real personality, and Dale Duesing is a toughly lyrical soloist. Though the live recording from Chicago could be better balanced, don't miss this issue if you believe there are other legitimate paths in music besides those laid down by the evangelists of the Second Viennese School—after all, Brahms was dismissed as a dull conservative by some musicians in his time! I can only admire this American composer who endured being dubbed 'old hat' but once declared ''that doesn't matter. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I believe this takes a certain courage''.'