ヴィヴァルディ: 「四季」

【ベイエ&リ・インコーニティ快挙の名盤『四季』、待望の復活!】
2008年にZig-Zag Territoiresレーベルで制作されリリース直後から熱烈な反響を巻き起こし、リ・インコーニティという古楽器合奏団の名を世界に知らしめた名盤がALPHAで新装再登場!2015年にALPHA COLLECTIONシリーズの1枚として限定再発売され、そのプレスが切れて以来の待望のカタログ復活です。自身もバロック・ヴァイオリン奏者でバロック・ダンスの専門家でもある音楽学者オリヴィエ・フレの全面協力により、『四季』のほか録音プロジェクト進行中に発見された曲も含め3曲の協奏曲を併録(RV 578a と 372 は当時世界初録音)。弦楽は各パート1人ずつに絞った室内楽編成で、通奏低音にはチェンバロと撥弦奏者が加わり、南フランスやイタリア、スペイン、コロンビアから集まったプレイヤーたちが緊密なアンサンブルで繰り広げる演奏はきわめてスリリング、それでいてヴィヴァルディ作品の魅力を隅々まで精緻に捉えた充実度。カフェ・ツィマーマンやアンサンブル415でも活躍していた時代を経て、本格的にリ・インコーニティに活動の軸を移した頃にあたる録音時を振り返って、ベイエ自身が内容を紹介する2015年再発売時のインタビュー(仏・英・独語)も、アルバムの面白さをよく伝える内容になっています。
ナクソス・ジャパン

Director and violinist Amandine Beyer acknowledges in her booklet notes for this disc that the world may not seem to need another recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, but then she tops the bar she has set up by delivering an entirely distinctive reading of the work. Her version, with the Italian historical-instrument group Gli Incogniti (who are not quite as unknown as all that), is as strikingly revisionist as the various turbo-powered, operatic Vivaldi recordings that began coming out of Italy in the 1990s, but it is different in flavor. In her own words, Beyer seeks "lightweight forces and freedom of phrasing." The group is small, with microphones put down right in the middle, and you hear lots of internal lines and interplay rather than contrast between orchestra and soloist. The overall feel is light and agile; Beyer doesn't so much push the tempo (although there's a little of that) as imbue the solo lines with maximum variety, creating a fantasy-like feel. That works quite well with the Four Seasons concertos, which are rendered in a colorful enough way that they evoke many of the images in Vivaldi's accompanying printed sonnets (which would have been a profitable inclusion in the booklet). There are, however, enough startling choices, like the heavily plucked and much-faster-than-Largo central movement of the "Winter" concerto (track 18), that the disc may be more to the tastes of the adventurous than otherwise; sample extensively and decide. The Four Seasons are balanced with other concertos that are quite rare, two of them world premieres. One and possibly more of these works were written for Vivaldi's orchestra of illegitimate girls at the Ospedale della Pieta, and indeed the entire disc is easy to imagine in performance by that presumably small group. The Violin Concerto in B flat major, RV 372, "Per Signora Chiara," and Violin Concerto in B minor, RV 390, are late works that contribute anew to the understanding of how much Vivaldi contributed to the forerunners of Classicism. It may be a bit far out, but this is a fresh Vivaldi disc in every way.