トム・コールト: 消えゆく3つの小品

2021年にBBCフィルハーモニックの「Composer-in-Association」に就任したトム・コールトの作品集でトム・コールトのデビュー・アルバムとなります。BBCプロムス、ルツェルン音楽祭などからも委嘱される彼の作品は、イギリスで主要なオーケストラやアンサンブルに支持されています。このアルバムにはヴァイオリン協奏曲である《プレジャー・ガーデン》や、BBCフィルハーモニックのために作られた《消えゆく3つの小品》などを収録しています。トム・コールトの遊び心があり魅惑的な音楽をお楽しみいただけます。
東京エムプラス

Tom Coult has become one of Britains most popular orchestral composers, and the four works on this album, though all played by the BBC Philharmonic, come from four different events and have as many different conductors. His style has surreal and humorous elements that may emerge from descriptive writing or vocal settings (hear the mysterious "Dyeing the canal blue for Queen Victoria" from the orchestral set Pleasure Garden). His music is generally tonal. This is not its main point, but it is perhaps one that attracts listeners; this release made classical best-seller charts in the late autumn of 2024. One aspect of his music is that it may take up traditional models without being in the least neo-anything; Coult says that this component was strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic in such works as Three Pieces That Disappear as he experienced "a sense of music (including my own) disappearing, fading away." A good example of his collection of procedures in this respect can be heard in the final work on the program, After Lassus. The work is based on Lassus duets from a collection called Novae aliquot; Coult "turns them around in the hand like plasticine." In so doing, he transforms the duets into "duets" for soloist and orchestra. This works differently in each of the six pieces, but all of them are fascinating, and no acquaintance with the original material is necessary. The BBC Philharmonic links the music together, and the various sound environments are reasonably well remastered. One could hardly imagine a better introduction to the work of this contemporary British composer. ~ James Manheim