Customer Rating: 
Summary: Slow, slower, slowest
Comment: Longest Adagio, I have ever heard. Endless. Perfect for funerals.
The rest is average to say the least.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Music review
Comment: After blank looks from the staff in High Street record shops I went to Amazon and found the music I was looking for immediately.
It was simple to purchase and it arrived very quickly. So no contest!
The music is fantastic.
Thank you Amazon.
Julian Culley
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Barber CD available
Comment: Much better than the Zinman disk in my view. Buy it for the Adagio. Love it for all of the pieces. Gorgeous!
Customer Rating:
Summary: GET this disc- it is absolutely phenomenal
Comment: THis CD is worth 10 times its weight in gold. Just get it, get it now, before you have to hear a minute more bad music.
It'll play in your head for the rest of your life.
What a great investment in your mind.
Have you bought it yet?
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best of Samuel Barber
Comment: Samuel Barber's most popular orchestral works have seldom been as well-performed as they were by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. This wonderful EMI recording is a lasting testament to the great things that Slatkin accomplished during his long tenure in St. Louis.The overture to "The School for Scandal" was an early triumph for Samuel Barber and it was clearly an exciting, dramatic, and sometimes lyrical work. Slatkin is very sensitive and understanding of this music and was able to lead the St. Louis musicians in one of the best performances of this popular work.
Perhaps Barber's best-known work is the "Adagio for Strings," originally part of a string quartet. It bears the distinction of having a world premiere under the legendary Arturo Toscanini. It's interesting to note that Barber had gone to Italy one summer and managed to meet the Maestro, who was on his own summer vacation. Toscanini was impressed with the aspiring, young composer and was soon even more impressed with the "Adagio for Strings." Toscanini chose to premiere the "Adagio" with the NBC Symphony on a broadcast performance. It is one of the most deeply moving compositions by any American composer. I've seldom heard such a powerful performance as this one by Slatkin and the St. Louis orchestra.
Toscanini also premiered the first of Barber's "Essays for Orchestra." Interestingly, however, the first recording of this energetic, colorfully orchestrated work was by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in a 12-inch 78-rpm RCA Victor Red Seal recording. Slatkin not only conducted this work but the two essays which followed, the third of which is one of Barber's later works (with rather spectacular, imaginative writing for percussion).
Finally, there is the rather jazzy and compelling "Medea's Dance of Vengeance." One critic referred to this as a boogie woogie for orchestra. It is very syncopated and almost overwhelming in its intensity, particularly in this performance. Anyone familiar with the legend of Medea will recognize that Barber has managed to faithfully depict the horrible events in this memorable work.
