Barber: Cello Concerto; Cello Sonata, etc review

The 1945 Cello Concerto is probably the least performed of Samuel Barber's concertos – less winsomely melodic than the work for violin, less flamboyantly virtuosic than the Piano Concerto. But as Christian Poltéra's fierce, theatrical performance demonstrates, it's a ruggedly impressive achievement in its own right, in which the romanticism associated with Barber's music only emerges from time to time, particularly in the slow movement and one of the episodes of the finale. The Cello Sonata, though, composed in 1932 when Barber was still a student, is ripely romantic, often seeming much more like Brahms than the later, leaner Barber, with an epic sweep to its themes that Poltéra and pianist Kathryn Stott respond to generously, though the balance between them favours the cello more than it should. And while we don't need another recording of Barber's Adagio for Strings, Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic's is wonderfully refined.

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