As is well-known by now, Samuel Barber withdrew his fine Second Symphony some 20 years after its 1944 Boston premiere. Following the composer's death in 1981, another set of parts was discovered in a warehouse in England and, happily, the symphony has in recent years begun to take on a new lease of life. If not Barber at his very best, it's still a powerful creation and full of good ideas. I don't feel Jarvi quite does the work full justice, though: in his hands both outer movements emerge as rather soft-centred and lacking in symphonic thrust (the finale sounds especially piecemeal-here), and he finds precious little poetry in the magical Andante, un poco mosso centrepiece. To be sure he obtains an agreeably cultured response from his Detroit band, but tensions remain low for the most part and our prolific Estonian's usual spontaneous touch seems for once to have deserted him in the recording studio. Andrew Schenck's comparatively recent New Zealand SO version (Stradivari) carries far greater conviction. Similarly, the Adagio, though skilfully played, hasn't the hushed intensity and simple devotional glow of the very finest renderings.
Jarvi's admirable companion disc of Barber's First (Chandos, 10/91) contained the large-scale, thoroughly engaging Gaelic Symphony of Amy Beach as a coupling. This time we are offered another enjoyable transatlantic rarity, the Symphony in F sharp minor by George Frederick Bristow (1825–98). A first violinist in the New York Philharmonic for a quarter of a century, Bristow was also a tireless promoter of American music, and even resigned for one season as a protest over that organization's neglect of native repertoire. This, the third of his five symphonies, dates from 1858.
Though utterly derivative in its musical idiom (Mendelssohn and Schumann loom unashamedly large), it has both unpretentious charm and solid craftsmanship in its favour. Bristow's orchestration tends to over-thickness, though there's some delightful (and quite unexpected) harp writing in the outer movements. In sum, a likeable creation and, in the context of the nineteenth-century American symphonic tradition, really something of a find. Showing a happy return to form, Jarvi presides over a beautifully turned, affectionate account, aided by transparent, warm-toned Chandos engineering.'