フリードリヒ・グルダ/モーツァルト・フォー・ザ・ピープル

クラシックを深く愛しながらも、伝統に従うことを嫌い、新しい音楽の可能性を探るためにはジャズ奏者に転向することまでも考えたという鬼才フリードリヒ・グルダ。この映像は1981年、アメリカハウスのコンサートを収録したもので、黒いスウェットシャツを着た彼が、モーツァルトを楽しそうに演奏する姿を見ることができます。卓越した技術と明快で独特な解釈に支えられたこのモーツァルトは、全く他に類を見ないものであり、グルダのモーツァルトに対する愛情をひしひしと感じることができるでしょう。
注…以前発売されていた映像では1981年2月13日収録とありましたがこちらのクレジットでは2月27日となっています。
ナクソス・ジャパン

The reputation for outrageousness of Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda (which culminated when he faked his own death in the late '90s), combined with the Mozart for the People title, may cause potential buyers to wonder what's inside this simply packaged DVD, but on this occasion, a 1981 recital held at the America House in Munich, Germany, Gulda played it straight. The most unconventional item on display is Gulda's plain black long-sleeved T-shirt. When he sits down at the piano, you will hear performances of four Mozart piano sonatas (the Piano Sonata in E flat major, K. 282; the Piano Sonata in D major, K. 311; the Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332, and the Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457, preceded as usual by the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475) that are well within the Viennese mainstream, with clean but vigorous interpretations marked by attention to an overall sense of line and direction. The C minor pair of works is nicely linked through motivic details: at the beginning of the Fantasia, Gulda emphasizes the tonic middle C, setting it up as the main focus of the phrase and delivering the chromatic lines that follow as an ominous series of distorted echoes, and the sonata begins with the same kind of structure. Throughout, phrase antecedents and answers seem to flow almost mechanically out of the principal thematic material; a work like the opening movement of K. 332, with its "Mannheim rocket" and other quasi-orchestral effects, seems to flow forward as a series of ornamented tonal blocks. Maybe it's Mozart that a theorist would love above all, but it has a long tradition in which Gulda is completely comfortable, and the elegance of the whole holds the viewer's attention. That attention may be distracted, however, by the odd camera work. There is a profusion of close-ups of Gulda's hands -- not unexpected in a recording of a piano performance, but they are mostly taken either from the left side (there's a reason the piano is placed on-stage so that the spectators are seated to its right!), or, more strangely still, from below. Sound is adequate, however, and this is nowhere anything less than a Viennese Mozart performance in the best classic style.