2013/03/30 の収穫：ディーリアス & アイアランド・パートソングス, 伊福部昭『リトミカ・オスティナータ 他』, aus『ReCollected1』

2013/03/30 の収穫：聴物篇

• Delius, Ireland "Partsongs by Frederick Delius & John Ireland", Paul Spicer / Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, Somm SOMMCD-0119, 2012
• 伊福部昭 "Sinfonia Tapkaara, Ritmica Ostinata, Symphonic Fantasia No. 1", Ekaterina Saranceva, Dmitry Yablonsky / Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Naxos 8.557587J, 2005
• aus "ReCollected1", plop plop15, 2013

ディーリアスのパートソングスも，昔，ハルシー・シンガーズのアルバムが出てた頃には，将来こんなに出るとは思わんかったよな．

Frederick Delius
Durch den wald
Sonnenscheinlied
Frühlingsanbruch
Her ute skal
An den Sonnenschein
Ave Maria
On Craig Ddu
Two songs to be sung of a summer night on the water
The splendour falls on castle walls
Midsummer Song
Wanderer’s Song

John Ireland
Heraclitus
Weep you no more sad fountains
Fain would I change that note
When May is in his prime
New Prince, New Pomp
Adam lay ybounden
The Holy Boy
New Year Carol
Twilight night
The Peaceful Western Wind
Laughing song
Spring, the sweet spring
Cupid
Cradle Song
Immortality
The Hills

SOMM celebrates two significant anniversaries this year: the 150th anniversary of Frederick Delius and the 50th anniversary of John Ireland, both composers whose choral and vocal music represents some of their most interesting work.

Eric Fenby, Delius's amanuensis, thought that some of his best work lay in vocal and choral music. He had a highly developed and extremely subtle feeling for sounds at work  - Delius himself used to say, 'I am always at my best when there are words'  and that he probed to the heart of whatever poem he was setting is beyond the shadow of a doubt. Many of his major works, dating from the first decade of the 20th century, are partially or fully choral, but a chain of minor works for unaccompanied voices threads through most of his working career, from early songs written in 1887 whilst studying at the Leipzig Conservatoire to one of the last pieces, completed with his wife’s assistance as paralysis struck him during the mid-1920s. The present collection offers all his completed works in this medium.

First come five four-part songs to German texts. Sonnenscheinlied and Fruhlingsabruch are translations from the Norwegian and Danish respectively.  Ave Maria set to a poem by the German Emanuel von Geibel, is a particularly beautiful work, while in the fourth song, Sonnenscheinlied  Delius sets  a humorous poem by the Norwegian  Bjornsjerne Bjornson (“ I lay’neath the trees idly dreaming. Then out came the gnats and midges to bite  And gadfly and hornet to end my delight”). In these early partsongs Delius has yet to find his distinctive musical voice. The year 1907 marked the beginning of his greatest fame in his native land, and towards the end of that year he completed what is possibly his finest unaccompanied chorus – the richly chromatic On Craig Ddu, subtitled ‘an Impression of Nature’. This is the first partsong of Delius’s maturity and the difference between this exquisite song and the early works is striking.

Remarkable also are Delius’s two wordless Songs to be sung on a summer night on the water, composed in 1917. Midsummer Song was composed in 1908,  together with the Wanderer’s Song  for male voices composed in the same year. Delius’s last part-song, The Splendour falls (1923), similarly employs a wordless chorus to great effect, with  the lower voices imitating the sound of the ‘horns [...] faintly blowing’.

Born into a literary household, John Ireland entered the Royal College of Music at the age of 14 where he began studies in piano and organ. When he was seventeen he became one of Stanford’s composition scholars and it’s at around this time that he produced his first partsong, The Peaceful Western Wind. This setting of Campion echoes Ireland’s interest in the Elizabethans and is also evident in his two partsongs dating from 1906. A setting of Dowland’s Weep you no more, sad fountains, and the playful setting of Nashe’s Spring, the sweet spring, full of birdsong, in which we hear the first glimpses of Ireland’s emerging interest in harmonic colour that would come to define his mature style.

Between 1910 and 1913 Ireland made a number of settings of poems by William Blake, including two light madrigalian works, Laughing Song and Cupid, and the touchingly innocent A Cradle Song with its soothing accompaniment in the lower voice parts. The subject of innocence became a prominent feature of Ireland’s work and it provided inspiration for The Holy Boy, originally composed for piano on Christmas Day 1913. The popularity of this piece encouraged various instrumental arrangements and in 1938 Herbert Brown, the family solicitor, supplied words for the melody which are used for both the solo and partsong versions.

While Ireland was composing increasing numbers of solo songs from 1916, he also composed a few significant partsongs between 1920 and 21 – When May is in his prime, with its lovely harmonic twist in the coda to each verse, and Fain would I change that note. The deeply melancholic Twilight Night  written in 1922 is one of his most significant contributions, telling of the loss of love or friendship, a parting of company which is deeply regretted. ‘If we should meet one day’, is imbued with subtly shifting harmonies, which are typical of Ireland’s most distinctive work. One of Ireland’s most beautiful and moving settings is the 1924 setting for men’s voices of Callimachus’s Heraclitus which continues this to great effect.

The Hills and Immortality are Ireland’s last two secular part-songs composed and set ten years apart in 1942 and 1953 and they are both remarkable for their sheer tonal beauty.

なんとなく気になったので，伊福部昭の『リトミカ・オスティナータ』なんぞを．と思ったが， ダブり だった orz．

「天下無双の生命力、偉大なる伊福部サウンドの底力！」……もはや言をまたない、日本音楽史上のあまりに巨大な峰となってそびえる、伊福部昭の作品集がついに本シリーズに登場。並居る日本楽壇中央の俊英を押しのけてのチェレプニン賞の衝撃的受賞（1935年）以来、伊福部昭は教師として、「ゴジラ」に代表される映画音楽の大家として、何よりその圧倒的な魅力を放出する偉大な作品群によって、絶大な影響を音楽界に与え続けています。本CDでは戦後の伊福部の代表的３曲を収録。ファンにとって、伊福部昭の音楽を荒々しいロシアのオーケストラで聴いてみたいというのは、ひとつの夢ではなかったでしょうか。ロシア・フィルは野生的な骨太のサウンドでその期待に見事に応え、リトミカ・オスティナータでのサランツェヴァのピアノ・ソロも実に鮮烈。伊福部家のルーツから説き起こす片山杜秀氏の気迫の解説文も素晴らしい読み応えです。必携の１枚！

Stimulated by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Akira Ifukube taught himself composition, while working as a forestry officer. His works, characterized by persistent ostinato, percussive sounds and multi-cultural melodies and rhythms, have something in common with the music of Orff, Khachaturian and Revueltas. Sinfonia Tapkaara was inspired by the primitive dances and songs of the ancient Japanese tribe, the Ainu, who stomped their feet to worship the earth. Ritmica Ostinata is a single movement ‘minimalist’ piano concerto alternating passages of increasingly propulsive energy with static, dream-like interludes. The Symphonic Fantasia No. 1 is a concert arrangement by the composer himself, of his music for monster films including Godzilla.

aus, なんか出てると思ったら，リミックス集だったか．

現行のエレクトロニック・ミュージック・シーンを代表する日本人アーティストの一人 aus。 彼が 2006 年から 2012 年までに手掛けたリミックスを 1 枚にコンパイルしたリミックス集が登場！ストレイテナーやno.9など数々の人気アーティストを手掛けてきた中から厳選された全 15 曲は、Tujiko Noriko、宮内優里、Cokiyu、matryoshka など現在のシーンを代表する面々に、最新のビート・ミュージックからハウス、エレクトロニカ、ポスト・クラシカルまでを昇華・横断した、ausらしい個性溢れるプロダクションと透明感溢れる美しい旋律が見事に融合した超逸品の数々。加えて現在入手困難な楽曲も多数収録した、過去のリミックスのベスト盤ともいえる激レア&超豪華な内容! aus の過去から現在、そして最新形までを一度に体感でき、同時にシーンを総括して一聴できる究極の一枚!!