House in Mt. Kisco

One of the U.S.'s most productive musical households is in suburban Mt. Kisco, N.Y. In the east wing of a rambling modern bungalow, Italian-born Composer Gian-Carlo Menotti turns out his brilliant, fast-paced operas (The Old Maid & the Thief, The Medium); in the west wing, lanky Pennsylvanian Samuel Barber concentrates on his own orchestral and chamber music.

Last week the house's latest work, Barber's Piano Sonata Op. 26, got a rousing reception at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. Played by Vladimir Horowitz, whose steely, piston-precise fingers can make the most of whatever music they attack, the four-movement work gave concertgoers the clean-cut, craftsmanlike profile they had learned to expect in Barber's music. Only in the Bach-like final fugue--and then mostly because of his choice of form --was Barber's conservative but original composition blurred by the wraith image of a dead master.

Barber, a nephew of the late Metropolitan Contralto Louise Homer, has been composing since he was seven, first won recognition at 18 when he took Columbia University's $1,200 Beams Prize for composition. Steering clear of the dentist-drill dissonances and lurching rhythms with which many other young U.S. composers were trying to pummel their audiences into submission, Barber wooed concertgoers, musicians and critics with more melodic understatement. In 1935 he won the Pulitzer Prize for music and the Prix de Rome of the American Academy in Rome. In 1937 his Symphony in One Movement was the first American work to crash the stiff-necked Salzburg Festival. In 1938 his smooth-flowing Adagio for Strings was premiered and later recorded by Toscanini.

Last week, with top concert pianists planning to add the new sonata to their repertories, Barber, 39, was not pressing his own work but worrying about the house's next production: Menotti's new full-length opera, The Consul, which has its Broadway opening next month.

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