Medea by Barber

A decade ago Samuel (Adagio for Strings) Barber wrote a piece of music for Dancer Martha Graham called Cave of the Heart. It dealt with a Medea-like woman whose consuming love turned to hate and revenge; the score followed the choreography closely in mood and motion. Last week Dimitri Mitropoulos and the Philharmonic-Symphony played Barber's recomposition of the same scenes, called Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance. It turned out to be a meatier work for full symphony than as a dance accompaniment, with the same virtues--and the same faults--that have made Barber, 45, one of the most-performed of contemporary American composers.

Among the virtues: a firm command of the orchestra, which produced a vividly mysterious opening figure on the xylophone, and two flutes that appear to bump and separate like a pair of slow-motion dancers. Chief fault: thematic aimlessness. After the promise of those opening bars, the next part of the brief score is limp and weary--a routine expression of Medea's mother love.

Only when the heroine goes into her ''dance of vengeance" do things liven up again. At that point Conductor Mitropoulos took over the dancer's role for himself, shrugging one shoulder grotesquely to the syncopated piano rhythm, splaying the fingers of his left hand to the spastic tempos. The music got more conventional in texture as it got noisier, but ultimately, sheer noise was sufficient: as the last, clubbing chord thundered out, the Philharmonic's subscribers gasped, and then burst into applause.

Ahead for Composer Barber: a new opera, with a libretto written by his composer-friend, Gian-Carlo (Saint of Bleecker Street) Menotti.

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