Barbara Harbach is widely known for her harpsichord performance as well as for the substantial amount of literature composed for the instrument in her honor.   Currently professor of music at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, she is a remarkably prolific American composer whose output includes symphonies, works for chamber ensemble, film music, and modern ballet scores, among many other genres.  

The works on this volume of her orchestral music are: Veneration for orchestra, Frontier Fancies for violin and orchestra, Arcadian Reverie for string orchestra, Rhapsody Jardine for oboe and string orchestra, and One of Ours – a Cather Symphony.   In the first chords of Veneration, Harbach presents her listeners with aural candy; delightful harmonies orchestrated by lush string textures effectively paint the evocative movement titles: I. Blessings: Gift of Blood, II. Charity-Caress, and III. Grace: Pleasure Heart.   The 1st movement’s gushing lyricism gives way to the imitative nature of the 2nd, whose original incarnation was a piece for cello and voice.   The last movement effectively synthesizes the thematic elements of the piece within its own contrapuntal architecture.   This delightfully rewarding piece belies her film score background, imbued with the characteristics of a storyteller of evocative imagery.

The following Frontier Fancies is equally intelligently crafted, successfully conveying frontier images with its driving rhythms and Copland-esque harmonies, led superbly by violinist František Novotný.   It is a many-hued mosaic of themes inspired by America’s heartland, simultaneously jubilant and pensive.   The movements each have their own interactions between soloist and orchestra, as outlined by Harbach in the CD liner notes:  “In ‘Fiddleflirt,’ the two are protagonists in a duel of speed and energy.   ‘Twilight Dream’ is an evocative aria and lush respite before the wild tarantella of ‘Dancedevil’.”

The succeeding Arcadian Reverie is essentially a lush theme and variations on a pastoral theme that harkens very closely to “Simple Gifts,” though not explicitly.   The interplay of melodic motives as the piece draws towards its conclusion displays Harbach’s compositional creative mastery.

In Rhapsody Jardine, renowned oboist Cynthia Green Libby makes full use of the oboe’s expressive tessitura as she produces a rich sound comparable to a watercolor tapestry in its sheer beauty and scope of shading.   Harbach often employs numerous themes which are then unified at the piece’s conclusion, which she does here with a plaintive duet between oboe and cello followed by an orchestral unison statement of the fugual subject that characterized the latter half of the piece.   Driven by Libby’s superb musicianship, the piece is a remarkable tableau.

In her description of how One of Ours – a Cather Symphony came into being, Harbach betrays an immense respect for Willa Cather as well as a personal connection to the characters and events that make up the novel One of Ours.   She spins the story of Cather’s protagonist Claude Wheeler in different stages of his experience in World War I.   “On Lovely Creek” is a bucolic portrayal of Claude in his homeland of Nebraska, happily naive and content in the world he knows.   “Autumn in Beaufort” depicts a respite to the war, a minor celebration in a town recently liberated from the Germans.   The notes of Harbach’s composition become the characters that are enjoying the simple things in life recently denied in the period of suffering and war.   The final “Honor at Boar’s Head” is a memoriam of the thousands of lives lost to preserve the American freedom we hold so dear.   The entire piece is uniquely evocative and features a more introspective expression from Harbach.

The CD liner notes contain descriptions of all the pieces in Harbach’s own words as well as detailed biographies of the composer, conductor, and the two soloists.  

© 2009 Robert Myers