On track: American beauties sampler

By WILLIAM DART

If you're a fan of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, you can get two for your money on the new Telarc compilation The Best of Barber. Leonard Slatkin and the strings of the Saint Louis Symphony on the orchestral side and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers with the composer's Agnus Dei choral version.

The first is marked by an extraordinary transparency of sound, the second by the sort of relaxed resonance that is the hallmark of first-class American choral singing.

The disc is a sampler and will hopefully encourage converts to search out the complete recordings of the works, if only to hear what Barber can do when the tempo lifts above Andante.

Both the Violin and Piano Concertos are represented by their slow movements - admittedly with Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker in particularly fine form - and a taste of brittle rondo would have been appreciated.

The only substantial work to be presented complete is Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic setting of James Agee's prose memories, sung by Sylvia McNair. It's a leisurely account (Dawn Upshaw's 1989 recording runs at 15' 20" to McNair's 17' 10") but more than justified when the soprano can draw such beauty from lines like "Now is the night one blue dew".

Among the joys of the present Naxos catalogue are the various Barber recordings by Marin Alsop, and Alsop's latest release features the American conductor with her own Bournemouth Symphony tackling music by Leonard Bernstein.

Bernstein's full stature as a composer is revealed in a stirring performance of his symphonic suite from On the Waterfront while the sheer brio of the Dance Episodes from On the Town has the exhilaration of a West Side Story yet to be written.

Bernstein's Chichester Psalms is church music at its most celebratory and there's no shortage of zest in the more extrovert moments, while producer Andrew Walton's attention to detail is extraordinary, especially when the composer calls for delicate scoring.

Marin Alsop has commented that it was experiencing Bernstein conducting when she was 9 that decided her upon a podium career. Lenny must be beaming from above to see how things have turned out.

* The Best of Barber (Telarc CD 80632, through Elite Imports) Bernstein, Chichester Psalms (Naxos 8.559177)