Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 14
Barber wrote the Violin Concerto on a commission from Samuel Simeon Fels for the violinist Iso Briselli, but in the end Albert Spalding was soloist in the premiere with Eugene Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra on February 7, 1941. The first BSO performance took place a few months later at Tanglewood, with Ruth Posselt as soloist and Serge Koussevitzky conducting.
Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, composed 1939-40, was the first concerto the composer ever wrote, to be followed by the Cello Concerto of 1945 and, much later, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto of 1962, the latter written for the opening of the new Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at New York’s Lincoln Center, where it was premiered by Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra with John Browning as soloist. Barber’s musical legacy stands as testimony to the awareness he expressed when he was 8 or 9, in a hesitant “Notice to Mother and nobody else,” which reads in part: “To begin with I was not meant to be an athelet [sic]. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure…Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very).”
Barber began piano lessons when he was 6, started composing when he was 7, and briefly took cello lessons; he was encouraged in his musical pursuits by his maternal aunt, the contralto Louise Homer. In 1924, when he was 14, Barber entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as a member of its first class, studying piano, composition, conducting, and voice. Already during his eight years at Curtis, where he later taught composition from 1939 until 1942, he produced several works that marked him as a talented composer, among them his Opus 3 Dover Beach, a setting for voice and string quartet of Matthew Arnold’s text, which Barber himself recorded in 1935.
By the time of his death in January 1981, the 70-year-old composer had produced works in nearly every important genre; anyone beginning to investigate his music will want to know at least this small cross-section of his output: Knoxville, Summer of 1915, a setting for soprano and orchestra of a James Agee text; the Hermit Songs and Despite and Still, both for voice and piano; the Cello Sonata and the Piano Sonata; the Adagio for Strings (originally the slow movement of his String Quartet, and premiered, along with the composer’s First Essay for Orchestra, by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in 1938); and the Overture to The School for Scandal, the first of his works to be performed by a major orchestra (it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in August 1933). In addition, there are two important operas: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Vanessa, which was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 and produced at the Salzburg Festival the same year, and Antony and Cleopatra, which was entirely overwhelmed by Franco Zeffirelli’s production when it opened the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in September 1966 and which, in its revised version of 1974 (premiered at the Juilliard School in February 1975), is still being reevaluated.
In his approach to musical form and harmony, Barber never attempted to deny his affinity for the musical romanticism of the 19th century. In 1971 he observed that, when writing, say, a concerto, “I write what I feel. I’m not a self-conscious composer... .” His work is always lyrically and dramatically expressive in a way that readily brings the listener into his music.
Barber wrote the Violin Concerto on commission from the Philadelphia businessman Samuel Fels, who was the manufacturer of Fels Naphtha soap* and a member of the Curtis Institute of Music’s Board of Trustees. (* Barber later referred to this work as his “concerto del sapone” [“soap concerto”].) The work was intended for Fels’s ward, Iso Briselli, a former child prodigy then in his late twenties who was also a student at Curtis. Barber composed the first two movements in Switzerland in the summer of 1939 and sent them to Briselli. According to Nathan Broder’s now controversial 1954 biography of the composer—a biography published by Schirmer, the publisher of Barber’s music—Briselli found these two movements “too simple and not brilliant enough for a concerto”—though this account was later disputed in the November 1995 issue of The Strad, where an article by George Diehl describes Briselli’s reaction only as “one of enthusiasm and admiration”—a reaction consistent with the composer’s own recollections. Barber subsequently began the finale in Paris but completed it only after the increasing anxiety of war necessitated his return home.
There are also conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Broder, Briselli declared the last movement too difficult and Fels demanded the return of his payment, whereupon Barber arranged a private performance by the American violinist Oscar Shumsky to demonstrate that the work was in fact playable. In her 1992 biography of the composer, Barbara B. Heyman relates that Briselli—in a 1982 interview with Heyman—later claimed only to have found the third movement “too lightweight” compared to the rest of the piece (with no mention of technical difficulties) and even suggested certain structural changes. (This is supported in the 1995 Strad account.) In any event, a demonstration was set up to show that the concerto was playable—though it remains unclear who needed convincing, since, according to Diehl’s article, this was not for the benefit of Briselli and Fels, both of whom remained unaware of this “test” until afterwards. Again according to Heyman, the demonstration took place at Curtis in the fall of 1939, even before the last movement was finished; Herbert Baumel played the violin part from manuscript with just two hours’ notice. Ultimately, Briselli relinquished the premiere, and Fels, who had paid half the $1,000 commission fee up front, with the remainder due upon the work’s completion, allowed Barber to keep the $500 that had already been paid. When the concerto was finished, it was played by Baumel with the Curtis Institute Orchestra under Fritz Reiner, and then privately by Oscar Shumsky with Barber at the piano, to allay any lingering concerns on the composer’s part before the official premiere—though there are also other, differing accounts of the tryout readings that took place at this time. In any event, the premiere took place on February 7, 1941, with violinist Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy.
The music itself needs little introduction. Despite its “Allegro” marking, the first movement is generally melodic and expansive, its moments of tension and climactic outbursts typically giving way to the characteristic songfulness. A poignant oboe line, only later taken up by the solo violin, sets the mood of the Andante, which moves from C-sharp minor to E major and whose tranquil atmosphere likewise stands in sharp contrast to the quick-moving perpetual-motion brilliance of the finale.
Marc Mandel, former Director of Program Publications for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, joined the staff of the BSO in November 1978 and managed the orchestra’s program book from 1979 until his retirement in July 2020. He is co-editor of Defending the Music: Michael Steinberg at the Boston Globe, 1964–1976, published in May 2026 by Oxford University Press.