Main Request
In January 1938 Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini then sent word that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it.
It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. On November 5, 1938, a selected audience was invited to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center to watch Toscanini conduct the first performance, a radio broadcast which was recorded for posterity.
The Adagio for Strings begins softly, with a single note, a B flat, played by the violins. Two beats later the lower strings enter, creating an uneasy, shifting suspension as the melody begins a step wise motion, like the hesitant climbing of stairs. In around eight minutes the piece is over, harmonically unresolved, never coming to rest.
It was reported that Toscanini did not look at the music again until the day before the premiere. On November 5, 1938, a selected audience was invited to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center to watch Toscanini conduct the first performance, a radio broadcast which was recorded for posterity.
The Adagio for Strings begins softly, with a single note, a B flat, played by the violins. Two beats later the lower strings enter, creating an uneasy, shifting suspension as the melody begins a step wise motion, like the hesitant climbing of stairs. In around eight minutes the piece is over, harmonically unresolved, never coming to rest.
If any music can come close to conveying the effect of a sigh, or courage in the face of tragedy, or hope, or abiding love, it is this.
Alternate Request
Ask opera fans to recommend their favorite slow moments in Mozart's stage works, and you might get "Dove sono" from The Marriage of Figaro or "Dies bildnis" from The Magic Flute. Good choices, but sooner or later, those opera fans are going to bring up "Soave sia il vento," from Cosi fan tutte.
The opera is mostly very polite on its surface, although the theme is
anything but: Two men disguising themselves and trying to seduce each
others' fiancées to win a bet and prove that "cosi fan tutte" – that all
women are like that, meaning fickle and unfaithful.
Before they
disguise themselves, though, the men pretend to sail off to war. And
their fiancées send them off, singing, "Soave sia il vento," – "May the
seas be calm and the winds gentle." The sincerity of those wishes is
made clear in Mozart’s music. You can practically feel the rolling sea
and those gentle winds as the music begins.
Here are Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, and Walter Berry....