Samuel Barber / Colette

On this day in classical music:  Samuel Barber’s “Piano Concerto,” with soloist John Browning, received its premiere in 1962 by the Boston Symphony conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. The work was performed as part of the inaugural series of concerts at Lincoln Center’s newly-opened Philharmonic Hall. Barber’s “Piano Concerto” earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. His opera “Vanessa” received the same honor five years earlier. Browning remained an ardent champion of Barber’s concerto and was frequently invited to perform it with major symphony orchestras. Listen to the dedicatee perform the finale of Barber’s devilish difficult piano concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra. George Szell conducts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkMFpLUZNGE&playnext=1&list=PLE670C21EF830A34E&feature=results_video 

Musical musings: Was (Colette) an authoress, an actress, a businesswoman, a public figure, a national heroine, a femme fatale? To some extent she was all of these, but there is little doubt that it is the first role that posterity will come to revere here. Her many books show brilliance and greatness as a writer which her peers acknowledged, especially in her later life. The show (“Colette”) in no way attempts to deal with the merits, the thought-processes, the artistic dilemmas or indeed any aspect whatsoever of Colette the writer. It sets out solely to inform the audience, by means of the special language of the musical, of facts surrounding this very special lady’s life and lifestyle. Whatever the motivations of her inner soul, she was quite plainly a vivacious, amusing and extremely interesting human being, whose sheer love of living deserves chronicling quite apart from the undoubted significance of her work on a more profound level. The musical ‘Colette’ was written as a result of a suggestion by Cleo Laine, who I suspect feels a special affinity with this lady whom she never met. – John Dankworth

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