Eric Huebner: Earth: Music for Solo Piano by Stephen Barber

Stephen Barber is a composer who splits his time between New York City and Austin, Texas. He composes music for TV and film and has extensive roots in pop music, but he is also a serious composer of art music and this disc is a collection of 13 of his short character pieces for solo piano. Barber studied composition with John Corigliano and it shows: his music is complex, his language is contemporary but the results are highly descriptive. Each work on this disc has an evocative title, some of them self-explanatory like Fireflies and Twilight in Tahiti, others more abstract like Stop, a tribute to Wayne Shorter, and Opium-White Fur, based on the writing of author Jardine Libaire. There are moments of real beauty in Easter, a tribute to J.S. Bach, and Earth, a meditation on the state of our planet.

One of the most striking pieces is about the Trump presidency: a dark and quirky combination of crude, lurching chords, repetitive outbursts and some fascinating effects with the sustain pedal. Barber is certainly not the first composer to try to appeal to both pop and “serious” listeners but he succeeds particularly well without sacrificing too much complexity or depth. All the works are performed by contemporary music specialist Eric Huebner, the New York Philharmonic’s pianist and a teacher at SUNY Buffalo and Juilliard. Huebner’s playing is masterful and entirely convincing: flawless technique, clear voicings and impeccable timing.

— Fraser Jackson, 12.13.2022

The very diverse artist Stephen Barber brings us a solo piano listen that embraces worldly popular music, film scoring and modern classical sounds on this very colorful and interesting body of work.

“Yellow Warbler” opens the listen with dancing keys that emit much beauty and warmth, and “Fireflies” continues the meticulousness with a hypnotic and flawless delivery that’s quite chilling and fascinating. Elsewhere, the firm presence of “Stop” manipulates space and tension well, while “Electra 88” is quite unpredictable with its low moments of rumbling and cinematic swells of intricate progressions. Close to the end, “Easter” flows with fluid melodies that weave in and out of adventurousness and prettiness, and “Earth” exits the listen with a sublime intimacy that’s quite reflective and heartfelt in its stirring appeal.

More than half the songs here are less than 3 minutes, as Barber covers a lot of territory that often draws inspiration from major figures, and will be sure to enthrall anyone with an ear for piano music.

— Tom Haugen, 12.07.2022

There is a sense of the outdoors in the music of Stephen Barber on a New Focus Recordings disc, but not really one of folk music – here the blend is of musical genres, with Barber’s interests being rather hard to pin down in terms of traditional classical approaches compared with those of popular and film music. Just as the natural world looms large in the Apollo Chamber Players CD, so it is ubiquitous here, but it may be better to say it “looms small,” since Barber seems primarily interested in small things characterized through very brief pieces (there are 13 on the disc, which lasts only 40 minutes). Yellow Warbler, Fireflies and In Garden Bright are all pleasant divertissements, although the third of them sounds more like fireflies flitting about than does the second. Eric Huebner plays all the pieces on the CD with a suitably light touch and, where appropriate, bits of humor, warmth, and delicacy. Different pieces here reflect different personal elements for the composer, but the works are better heard as small character delineations – contemporary versions of the sort of salon music heard on the Kang/Kvitko disc – than as anything significantly autobiographical, much less profound. The titles of the pieces are interestingly if not precisely evocative: Through a Dog Star Gaze into Sirius, Stop, Twilight in Tahiti (whose pervasive quietude is winning), Circo Massimo (where chordal drama dominates), Electra 88 (where the overall impression is of disconnectedness), Falling Water, Opium-White Fur, Easter (in which gentle rocking is pervasive), Slow Dripping Beast (strangely titled, politically motivated and thoroughly overdone), and Earth (a lovely conclusion to the disc, bringing a sense of peace and consonance). These pieces, individually and collectively, are pleasant enough and never overstay their welcome; none of them aspires to any level of profundity. And that is actually a pleasure, given the portentous nature of so much contemporary music: Barber is content in these works to produce engaging trifles that Huebner can present with panache and without attempting to make them seem to be of greater importance than they are. This is not the sort of disc that will likely bear frequent re-listening – the material is just too slight – but it is a CD that is welcome for the way it shows a contemporary composer willingly mixing genres and musical approaches without feeling the need to extend or belabor his points or to produce music of high intensity or high drama.

I first heard music by Stephen Barber (b 1952) in two recordings by Meridian Arts Ensemble (J/A 1997: 205 & J/F 1997: 200). Both works were astonishing, quite unusual as brass music. These 13 little piano works might not be astonishing, but they hold my attention and offer surprises—such as the quiet and beautiful chords in the middle of a fluttery `Yellow Warbler’. Barber offers a few sentences about each work, most of which were inspired by specific events (the warbler crashing into a window, for instance). Superb playing by University at Buffalo pianist Eric Huebner.

— Barry Kilpatrick, 1.16.2023