イギリスのピアノ協奏曲集

これまでにも知られざる作曲家たちによる素晴らしい作品を世に広めてきたサイモン・キャラハン。このアルバムではこれまで演奏機会のあまりなかったイギリスのピアノ協奏曲を取り上げています。作曲当時ゴードン・ジェイコブの《ピアノ協奏曲第2番 変ホ長調》はプロムスでも取り上げられ、好評価で迎えられています。また、ジョン・アディソンの《ピアノと管弦楽のための変奏曲》は、管楽器を木管2本、ホルン4本、トランペットとトロンボーン各1組ずつ、そしてバストロンボーンだけという比較的小さなオーケストラのために書かれました。
東京エムプラス

The Lyrita label has done yeomans work in recovering British music lost to the depredations of high modernism, but it has rarely done better than what is on offer here. Pianist Simon Callaghan, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and a pair of conductors, performs three piano concertos that here receive their world premieres. It is dismaying that these works were allowed to be forgotten, but encouraging that they are now being revived. All are in a neoclassic vein but are quite fresh in their formal construction and are sprightly and lively in mood. There are two unique variation sets. The slow movement of the 1957 Piano Concerto in E flat major of Gordon Jacob is an unusually dramatic treatment of the form, with a slow introduction that recurs in the main body of variations. Still more ingenious are the Variations for piano and orchestra of John Addison (who was Jacobs student); these deploy a variation set across the three movements of a traditional concerto form, a wholly novel effect. The Piano Concerto, Op. 30, of Edmund Rubbra is a youthful work, disclaimed by the composer, who is the only one of the three whose name will even be familiar at all to the majority of listeners. However, it is highly listenable, a splashy and virtuosic work elegantly dispatched by Callaghan. He and the other musicians are fully into the spirit of these works, and Lyritas recording works well in the spacious acoustic of Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff. A valuable and absolutely delightful release that rightfully appeared on classical best-seller charts in the late summer of 2023. ~ James Manheim