A.ルビンシテイン:ピアノ協奏曲第1番、第2番、6つの性格的小品 第3番「舟歌」、第5番「子守歌」(レイトゥシュ編)

ネーメ・ヤルヴィとアンナ・シェレストによる
ルビンシテイン:ピアノ協奏曲全集完結編!

Sorel Classicsから、ピアノ協奏曲第4番,ロシア奇想曲(SCCD 013)、ピアノ協奏曲第3番,第5番(SCCD 014)と発売されていた、アンナ・シェレストとネーメ・ヤルヴィによるアントン・ルビンシテインのピアノ協奏曲全集の完結編は、販売提携先だったMusic & Artsからの発売。19世紀的ヴィルトゥオーソの色濃いことで人気のある第1番も、その1年後の第2番も、シェレストの意欲的なピアノとヤルヴィ指揮の豊かなオーケストラで万全の演奏になっている。レーベルを跨いだバラ3枚とはいえ、シェレストとヤルヴィによるルビンシテインのピアノ協奏曲全集はその決定盤というものになっただろう。アルカディ・レイトゥシュのオーケストラ編の「舟歌」と「子守歌」もたいへんに素敵だ。日本ではチャイコフスキー絡みで名前ばかりが有名なアントン・ルビンシテインの芸術に改めて接するには打って付けだ。
東武商事株式会社

The music of Anton Rubinstein is rarely played except for a few short encore-type pieces. He wrote five piano concertos that are not common in the repertory, at least outside Russia, and pianist Anna Shelest, backed by Neeme Jarvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, have little competition in their complete series. Perhaps it is Shelests smooth performance, making short work of the Lisztian virtuosity in these pieces, that put this album on classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023. Maybe it is the quite rare orchestrations of two of his characteristic piano pieces that serve as an entracte, but geopolitics might also have had something to do with it. Rubinstein, even more than his successor Tchaikovsky, represented a Western orientation in Russian music, and when one sees Shelests Ukrainian folk garb, performing together with the national orchestra of a country that may be menaced by Russia, it begins to make up a convincing package. The appeal of these early Rubinstein concertos is that their patterns are Classical, and the composer has a variety of ingenious ways of shoehorning extreme virtuosity into them; Shelest not only hits the notes but also catches the deceptive restraint. She is ideally backed by Jarvis crisp orchestral treatments, and the modest dimensions of the orchestras hall also work to the musics advantage. It may be that geopolitics will rewrite the repertory a bit, but the truth is that Rubinstein was already due for a bit of a comeback, and Shelest has contributed to that. ~ James Manheim