Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto is one of the great achievements of 20th-century American music: virtuosic, volatile, and uncompromising. But it was nearly a disaster. With the premiere looming and the third movement still unwritten, Barber faced impossible pressure. Pianist John Browning, part of a prolific but haunted group of American pianists that included his classmate Van Cliburn, Gary Graffman, Byron Janis and others, was left scrambling to prepare for the biggest performance of his life.
Let's explore the dramatic creation and legacy of the Barber Concerto: from the composer’s aesthetic struggles to the high-stakes premiere that helped define a generation of American pianists. We’ll meet the formidable duo of Barber and Browning, uncover the challenges in the process, and dig into the music itself: its sweeping lyricism, jagged rhythms, and breakneck finale. Is this concerto romantic? Neo-romantic? Modernist? Or something else entirely?
This is a piece that artists from Aaron Copland to Virgil Thomson to Vladimir Horowitz had strong feelings about—and we’re going to uncover why it still provokes and dazzles today.
This video is a tribute to Barber’s ambition—and to the pianist who risked everything to bring his vision to life.
