「チェーホフについて少し話しましょう」～ドミニク・アージェント: 歌曲集

ドミニク・アージェントは1927年ペンシルヴェニア出身。叙情的なオペラと合唱作品で知られている。ミネソタ大学音楽学部名誉教授。1975年にピューリッツァー賞を受賞している。
珍しい無伴奏の歌曲から始まるのでシリアスな雰囲気が支配する。しかし、次のオリガとチェーホフの会話のようなデュエットが始まると小さな室内オペラの空気感になる。ペトラルカは古典的な詞に近代的な音楽の取り合わせが面白いが、ブルームバーグの歌唱が見事である。キャバレーソング集は、これまでと打って変わって少し肩の力の抜けたような雰囲気になるのだが、ザバラの歌唱にはくずれた所がなく曲の良さがストレートに伝わってくる。曲順も選曲も好く考えられたアルバムである。
東武商事株式会社

American composer Dominick Argento died in 2019 and seems to lack an album that pays tribute to his much-performed output. This 2025 release, however, could fill the bill with its four song cycles; Argento was known as a song and opera composer, and his music, even when atonal, was characterized by long, lyric vocal lines, something he freely attributed to his Italian heritage and frequent residence in Florence. In fact, one thing that captures the listeners attention here is that whether his music is fully tonal (as in the Cabaret Songs of 2011) or verging on serialism, his personality hardly changes. Argentos vocal orientation is apparent in how he is one of the few composers who can effectively set prose from diaries and letters. One of his breakthroughs came with the song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1975), which snared him a Pulitzer Prize, and he wrote several more prose song cycles after that. One is A Few Words About Chekhov (1996), which sets passages letters between Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and his wife, Olga, sometimes artfully placing them into a duet. The work shows Argentos trademark emotionalism and would be ideal for use in college courses on the Russian writer. Also notable are the Cabaret Songs, which are less well known than the songs written in this vein by William Bolcom and could easily be programmed with them, and the Three Meditations of 2008, which include a setting of Walt Whitmans The Last Invocation. The singers are quite distinguished here; mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala has a notably rich voice, and she also contributed the detailed annotations. The nearly octogenarian Martin Katz plays most of the accompaniments. A fine release in the field of American vocal music. ~ James Manheim