The main interest here is the Second Symphony, though to be honest I can now see why Barber should at one point have wanted to consign it to the proverbial waste-paper basket. Since I seem to have begun on a negative note, let me first take the finale. A strong finale would have tipped the whole balance of this symphony. Barber sounds as though he has quite simply run out of inspiration, and of time—as though his deadline (the symphony was commissioned, believe it or not, by the US Air Force) is nigh. He resorts to some fairly flatulent note-spinning, some seven or so minutes of hectoring counterpoint, none of it going anywhere at all—a score, if you like, without a good war movie to give it purpose. There is a brief, potentially memorable, lull featuring high haunted strings—a wistful backward glance before the homeward-stretch, a page or two which might have spoken volumes in a better context. As it is, the gesture quickly evaporates into the surrounding material.
But it's not all bad news. The busy and resilient first movement provides us with a solid, if not especially memorable, foundation—though no Barberite will be too disappointed with the florid second subject—oboe, then strings and with a striking tuba counterpoint adding individuality—and the subsequent development has its passing interests, not least an exciting climax which speaks dramatically in a typically Barberesque explosion of percussion. Best of all is the second movement. And is that really surprising given Barber's remarkable track record in aspiring lyric themes? This one is long and lonely, and starts out on cor anglais; would that the rest of the piece had its staying power. But nothing I have said would dissuade even me from auditioning this rarity, post-haste, and it receives here a first-class performance—strong and thoroughly prepared—from performers who clearly believe in it. As the conductor Andrew Schenck says in his affectionate note: ''It all depends on what we look for.''
No one need look too far for distinction in the other pieces featured here, though only the omnipresent Adagio for strings is exactly common currency. All are decent performances, spaciously recorded in New Zealand Radio's Wellington studios, though one might easily point the finger, in the Adagio for instance, at deficiencies in the strings' sostenuto, or the visibility of a seam or two in the tricky School for Scandal Overture—that heartening product of Barber's twentieth year (its lovely second subject truly the shape of things to come). Schenck, though, achieves a great deal with his orchestra through shapely phrasing and a relish of dramatic gesture: the First Essay is properly, defiantly rhetorical, and Barber's 'Shelley-scape' is atmospherically chronicled from Delian undulations to resounding Gothic climax.'