A protege of Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, and winner of the 1989 Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood, Marin Alsop has been winning golden plaudits lately, not least for her pioneering work on behalf of Christopher Rouse (RCA, 8/97) and Joan Tower (Koch International, 4/00). That she is a musician of outstanding gifts is amply reinforced by this new all-Barber anthology with the orchestra of which she is principal guest conductor.
Especially valuable here is the red-blooded rendering of the wartime Second Symphony, a work the composer subsequently withdrew in 1964 some 20 years after its electrifying Boston premiere under Serge Koussevitzky. Alsop shows just what a powerfully inspired creation it is, extracting every ounce of sinewy logic from its fraught outer movements, while distilling plenty of wonder and atmosphere in the haunting central Andante, un poco mosso. Returning to Neeme Jarvi's cultured 1993 Detroit SO recording, I persist in finding in it an oddly literal, tingle-free document. Happily, Andrew Schenck's 1988 NZSO account is still available - a wholly commendable performance, if a little short on the exciting cogency of this newcomer.
Alsop gives a no less convincing reading of the magnificent First Symphony, always acutely responsive to the music's daring expressive scope and building climaxes of riveting cumulative intensity, yet at the same time not shirking one inch from the unashamedly rhetorical grandeur of Barber's youthful masterpiece. Indeed, in its unhurried authority, big heart and epic thrust, it's the kind of interpretation one could have imagined from Bernstein himself in his NYPO heyday. Elsewhere, I like the aptly bardic quality Alsop brings to the outer portions of the marvellously compact First Essay (another gripping, purposeful conception), while few could fail to respond to the twinkling affection and gentle wit she lavishes on the irresistible School for Scandal Overture.
All of which brings me to my only niggle. Were the orchestral contribution just a little better co-ordinated and a fraction more polished, this would be a world-beater. As it stands, however, comparison with, say, Zinman's stylish 1991 anthology with the Baltimore SO (one of the high spots of the entire Argo catalogue) tends to throw into sharper relief the relative shortcomings of Alsop's hard-working Scots (their fiddles especially lack something in silk-spun refinement and tone when playing above the stave). Moreover, Tony Faulkner's expert engineering can't quite disguise the acoustical shortcomings of Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall, but the finished article is tonally truthful and conveys plenty of impact when required (witness those walloping bass-drum thwacks towards the end of the Second Symphony).
For just a fiver, then, this remains a pretty mouth-watering proposition, and I look forward to further instalments in Naxos's Barber series from this same source.

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