「長い17世紀」 ～ 初期鍵盤音楽の宝庫

ダニエル=ベン・ピエナール新録音!
「長い17世紀」の様々な鍵盤音楽を集成!

南アフリカ出身、現在はロンドンを拠点に華麗な演奏活動と王立音楽アカデミー(RAM)の教授職などを続ける天才ピアニスト、ダニエル=ベン・ピエナール。ヴァイオリニストの川畠成道や、トランペッター&プロデューサーのジョナサン・フリーマン=アットウッドとの共演でも知られています。

「長い17世紀(The Long 17th Century)」とは、16世紀後半から18世紀前半までを含めた期間のことで、1600年や1700年といった単なる数字のみで区切るのではなく、歴史的・文化的背景を重視した歴史区分です。ピエナールは、「長い17世紀」の間に多彩に発展した鍵盤楽器音楽を、ヨーロッパ全域の様々なスタイル、ジャンル、テクニックを調査して集成。すべて違う作曲者による36作品、約2時間半にわたる驚異のリサイタル・プログラムです。多くの作品はモダン・ピアノでの世界初録音となります。
東京エムプラス

Daniel-Ben Pienaar is not the first artist to play 17th century keyboard music on the piano, but nobody has done it with quite the variety of sounds and approaches he manages here. Two CDs worth of short keyboard pieces from this era might seem a lot, but Pienaar holds the listeners interest and much more. He divides the repertory into four types, which he terms Intimation and Imitation (these are polyphonic pieces), Dance, Variation, and Depiction and Evocation (representational works). National styles have relevance in the music of the 17th century, but these general principles cross national boundaries, and Pienaars program allows the listener to hear the tremendous variety of ways composers approached these basic compositional problems. Most of the music is fairly obscure, and there are some real gems, like Giovanni Maria Trabacis highly chromatic Gagliarda Seconda, a combination of the dance and polyphonic ideas, and the extremely virtuosic Variations on La Capricciosa of Dietrich Buxtehude. The pieces were written for a variety of keyboard instruments, and looked at one way, the piano is a kind of compromise between them; Pienaar applies some pianistic sounds, but hes hardly a Glenn Gould. Yet hes not neutral, either. He uses the piano to bring out the expressive devices in the music, often with extraordinary effect. The piano becomes almost an investigative tool in this superb release by one of the most original pianists on the current scene.