アフリカの歌曲集

ナイジェリア系の2人の演奏者がアフリカにおける歌曲創作の歴史と今を伝えるアルバム。モーツァルトと同時代のジョゼフ・ブローニュ・シュヴァリエ・ド・サン=ジョルジュを除けばすべて20世紀以降の作品で、アヨ・バンコールがナイジェリア内戦の悲しみを歌った「 Adura fun Alafia」など、先住民族の言語と独自の音楽素材を西洋の芸術歌曲の形式に融合させようとする試みを聴くことができます。
レベッカ・オモルディアは「アフリカのクラシック音楽のパイオニア」と称賛される、ルーマニアとナイジェリアの血を引くピアニスト。ロンドン、ウィグモアホールで開催されるアフリカ音楽コンサート・シリーズの芸術監督を務めています。フランスとナイジェリアの血を引くオモ・ベッロは科学者としての経歴を持ちながら多数のコンクールで入賞してきた歌手で、慈善公演や医療研究団体を支援する活動を行っています。
ナクソス・ジャパン

Pianist Rebeca Omordias pioneering albums of music in Western classical forms by African (and African-adjacent) composers have brought a good deal of success to Omordia and the Somm label, not least because the listener has the feeling of discovering a repertory that is substantial but completely unknown, at least outside the immediate orbits of the musicians and works involved. On this, her third release in this vein, Omordia teams with Nigerian soprano Omo Bello to explore African song. The album has some differences from the first two, even beyond that in medium. The African composers here, in contrast to those on the two piano releases, are all from Nigeria, and mostly from the Yoruba and Igbo cultures. An attractive feature is that there are short percussion interludes, by the Nigerian-British player Richard Olatunde Baker, that, as it were, illuminate the rhythmic layer that is partly submerged in the larger Western structures of the vocal works. As for the individual works, there is considerable variation in the composers approaches to the basic problem of reconciling musical systems that are in some ways incompatible. Sample the brief folk song settings of Akin Euba, which sound among the most "African" of all the pieces, yet also fall into the concise folksong tradition of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Perhaps the pieces here by composers who were active in Europe -- the Guadeloupean-born Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Errollyn Wallen with her often-performed Peace on Earth, and Shirley J. Thompson -- do not quite mesh with the African works in a way that was true on the earlier albums. But this release arguably delves deeper into the African sources than do Omordias earlier efforts. In any event, this is a fresh installment in a series that has been well worth following. ~ James Manheim