エレーナ・ルーアー: 6つの弦楽四重奏曲

ウィリアム・ボルコムとヴィンセント・パーシケッティの門下生で、ジャズをオスカー・ピーターソンとエディ・ラスから学んだアメリカの女流作曲家、エレーナ・ルーアー(1963-)の6つの弦楽四重奏曲を、ドヴォルザークの「糸杉(cypress)」をアンサンブル名として、アメリカ、サンフランシスコを拠点に活躍するアンサンブル、サイプレス弦楽四重奏団が録音。6作のうち、第5番、第6番、第4番はサイプレス弦楽四重奏団による委嘱作です。ベートーヴェンの弦楽四重奏曲全集(AV 2318、AV 2348、AV 2356)の完成度の高い演奏でも話題を呼んだ実力派アンサンブルの精緻な演奏で、ルーアーの雄大な室内楽作品をどうぞ。
東京エムプラス

Michigan-born American composer Elena Ruehr takes eclecticism to new lengths: her press materials accurately promise influences from Perotin, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, Schoenberg, and jazz, and there are sounds of Indonesian gamelan music, Indian classical traditions, and various African and Latin American folk musics on top of that. It's hard to know what to make of the assertion that "Ruehr is a devotee of 12-tone techniques and minimalist methods; they go hand in hand." That's certainly not a position to which either the minimalists or the 12-tone composers would assent (one thinks of the self-description of Milton Babbitt, one of Ruehr's teachers, as a "maximalist"). Yet Ruehr generally avoids blank pastiche. Each work has a consistent stylistic universe, and the string quartet form, especially, anchors the diversity in classical forms. The appeal of these works, in fact, often lies in the tension between the string quartet medium and the variety of musical references. Some of these recordings, mostly by the composer's champions the Cypress String Quartet, were made in the past, but there's an argument for hearing all six quartets together and getting the full range of possibilities. On top of this, Ruehr offers extramusical programs or ideas that are vividly realized in sound. Sample the "Carmen Studies Grammar" movement of the String Quartet No. 5, with its mixture of Asian stringed instruments and really ravishing melody; the quartet as a whole takes a novel by Ann Patchett for its program. The String Quartet No. 4 responded to a Cypress commission for a response to Mozart's String Quartet in C major, K. 465 ("Dissonance") and Beethoven's String Quartet in C major, Op. 59, No. 3. Avie remasters these various recorded sources into a convincing whole. This is a recording especially commended to string performers: any of these six works could enliven a string quartet concert.