サミュエル・コールリッジ=テイラー作品集

新レーベル「チネケ!レコード」からの第1弾

ヨーロッパ初の黒人と少数民族によるオーケストラで、2017年にBBCプロムス・デビューを果たした「チネケ!オーケストラ」。今年デッカ・レコードとパートナーシップを組み、新レーベル「チネケ!レコード」を設立しました。そのリリース第1弾となるのがこのアルバムです。没後110年を記念し、イギリスの作曲家、指揮者、政治活動家であるサミュエル・コールリッジ=テイラーの音楽を採り上げました。有名なヴァイオリン協奏曲ト短調は新進気鋭のスター、アメリカのヴァイオリニスト、エレナ・ウリオステと共演しています。一緒に収録されているサミュエルの娘アヴリルによる作品は世界初録音となります。CD2枚組。
ユニバーサル・ミュージック/IMS

This album marks the debut of the minority-oriented Chineke! Orchestra on the Decca label, and it is quite a promising beginning indeed. Perhaps the African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a natural choice for the group, but even with his 21st century revival, it seems to be the same few pieces that are played and recorded over and over, focusing on the traces of African-American music and African music in his work. Hearing a lot of his music together in one place is something of a revelation, for his melodic gift seems inexhaustible. Sample the Romance for violin, Op. 39, and one will see why some of Coleridge-Taylors contemporaries dubbed him "the Black Dvořak"; it is a much better moniker than the "African Mahler" nickname bestowed during his U.S. tour. Indeed, even in the African Suite, Op. 35 (an arrangement of a piano work), the African element, though it is there, is minimal. Another big attraction here, and the explanation for the nonspecific Coleridge-Taylor title, is the presence of the tone poem Sussex Landscape, Op. 27, by Coleridge-Taylors daughter Avril, dating from the mid-30s. Though not on the cutting edge of British music, it is a fine, evocative work with a plangent English horn part. The young orchestra plays with not only enthusiasm but also precision in live as well as studio tracks, and the group seems to be offering not only a mission but musical value. ~ James Manheim