ウィリアム・ブッシュ: 室内楽作品集

20世紀前半にコンサート・ピアニストとしても活躍したイギリスの作曲家、ウィリアム・ブッシュの室内楽作品集。本アルバムには、独立した作品として書かれた「3つの小品」から、エリザベス・ポストンのために書かれた「チェロとピアノのための思い出」、ブッシュの室内楽曲の中でも最も充実した作品のひとつで、叙情的な才能が顕著に表れている「ピアノと弦楽のための四重奏曲」などが収められています。
東京エムプラス

The music of English composer and pianist William Busch (1901-1945) has been little recorded. He made no friends during World War II by espousing pacifism, and he died a truly tragic death at age 44 caused by overexertion when walking in a snowstorm after the birth of his infant daughter. However, the Lyrita label, oriented toward obscure older English music as well as to historical performances, has championed his works, and they are becoming more common on chamber music programs. Unlike so many other English composers of the period, Busch showed little influence from Vaughan Williams or Britten, either. (One of his teachers was John Ireland, and he comes closer.). Nor, however, did he embrace the continental avant-garde. The best way to describe the chamber works here might be to say that one should imagine a Bartok who was not specifically Eastern European and who stuck closer to traditional tonality. Consider the Tarantella movement from the Suite for cello and piano of 1943, which is more oriented toward the rhythmic nature of the dance than to any neo-Romantic content. The Passacaglia for violin and viola is a fascinating work, not neo anything and packing, as Bartok did in chamber music, a great deal of counterpoint into a restricted instrumental medium. The small cello pieces -- sample A Memory -- are arrestingly beautiful. Many of Buschs works were on a small scale, but the program offered here by members of the fine Piatti Quartet includes a good-sized Piano Quartet that is both lyrical and logically constructed. The sound from the Wyastone Estate Concert Hall is ideal on an album that may well remake the British 20th century chamber music repertory a bit. ~ James Manheim