シェーンベルク、ヴァレーズ: 作品集

コチシュ指揮、シェーンベルク&ヴァレーズ!

シェーンベルク唯一の交響詩である《ペレアスとメリザンド》は単一楽章から成り、複雑な対位法が用いられた後期ロマン派風の作品ですが、様々な工夫がみられ、その後の十二音技法を用いた作品に繋がっていくものと言えるでしょう。また、ヴァレーズの《アメリカ》は後期ロマン派風の作品を書いていたヴァレーズがストラヴィンスキーらの影響を受けて打楽器を多用するようになった最初期の作品です。
ピアニストとして著名だったゾルターン・コチシュは、ブダペスト祝祭管弦楽団の創設メンバーであったり、ハンガリー国立フィルハーモニー管弦楽団の音楽監督に就任し、指揮者としても活躍しました。
東京エムプラス

Zoltan Kocsis is best known outside of Hungary as a pianist, and is widely regarded as one of the best interpreters of Debussy and Bartok. Since 1997, however, Kocsis has served as music director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and has led it through a period of renewal and growth that many American orchestras would be happy to emulate. This Budapest Music Centre disc, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Zoltan Kocsis: Schonberg, Varese, is put together from live concerts given by the orchestra under Kocsis' direction in 2001 and 2002. Both recordings are quite dark and muddy, and these are anything but pristine performances of the works represented, namely Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5, and Edgard Varese's Ameriques. Neither work was commonly heard in Hungary before the collapse of the Eastern-European communist bloc. If Varese and Schoenberg are sacred to one's tastes, then this disc will not be for you, as the orchestral performances lack focus and coordination, and Kocsis' approach to both pieces are revisionist in the extreme, tending to be on the fast side, sometimes in conflict with the great deal of flexibility used within Kocsis' tempos. In his classic 1966 Utah Symphony Orchestra recording of Ameriques, Maurice de Abravanel reaches the "big city" trumpet-led section of the score in about seven and a half minutes, whereas Kocsis takes about ten to get to the same point, despite a fast introduction! Ameriques is marred by a conclusion that dissolves into chaos, but Pelleas und Melisande is a bit more successful performance. Even in Pelleas there are points where one thinks: "it's okay to slow down here a bit." Despite the terrible sloppiness of these performances, they possess a vitality and edge that make them quite an exciting listen. If one is to fail, then failing in a quest for excellence is always to be preferred. As a realization of either of these works, Kocsis and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra are simply not viable -- not yet. As a document of an orchestra coming out from under the yoke of communism to perform two of the most difficult scores in contemporary literature, this doesn't seem like failure -- it seems like triumph.