リスト: 十字架の道行&コンソレーション

静謐で瞑想的な響きで歌いだされる最晩年のリストの魂。

ノルウェー出身の人気ピアニスト、アンスネスの新録音は、19世紀ヨーロッパ音楽界を席巻した作曲家リストが最晩年に心血を注いだピアノ独奏付きの大作合唱曲「十字架の道行」。イエスの受難を14の場面に分けて描く絵画を音で表現した宗教音楽で、グレゴリオ聖歌とマタイ受難曲の影響を受け、晩年のリストらしい単純化された簡潔な旋律や和声と半音階的でシェーンベルクを想起させるような無調の部分とが並立し、ヨーロッパ音楽の長い歴史を1曲に内包されたような趣があります。カップリングは、リストのピアノ曲では「愛の夢」と並ぶ代表作「コンソレーション」「詩的で宗教的な調べ」。

ノルウェー屈指の女性合唱指揮者グレーテ・ペーデシェン指揮するノルウェー・ソリスト合唱団の透明で立体的なハーモニーがリスト最晩年の心意気を伝えます。アンスネスが主催する2024年のローゼンダール音楽祭の最終コンサートで演奏された直後にセッション録音したアルバムです。
ソニー・ミュージック

Liszts Via Crucis ("Stations of the Cross") is not often played. The work was begun in Rome, where Liszt was living a cloistered Franciscan life in grand contrast to his previous continent-spanning stardom, and annotators tend to emphasize its austere quality. A further point of interest is that it is one of a number of late Liszt works that seem to push to the boundaries of tonality and sometimes beyond. These features are compelling enough, but what is even more unusual is the works structure. It may be classified as choral music or sometimes as an organ work, but really, it is neither one. It was originally for organ, but Liszt also made the piano version heard here. Moreover, he proposed an outdoor performance with a giant harmonium, something of which devotees of historical performance ought to take note. The keyboard sometimes plays alone, depicting by itself the events in the Passion narrative, or the choir or a soloist may enter almost immediately, but in many movements, there is a lengthy keyboard passage at the beginning, more than an introduction. The keyboard controls the mood. It is not a reaction to what is being sung by the choir; it is rather a relocation of the story to the mind of the individual musician. The choir, in general, makes concrete what has already been suggested by the keyboard player and, in the case of the all-instrumental movements, remains with the keyboard alone. The lines are simple but not neutral. The Norwegian Soloists Choir and the two soloists (a tenor Jesus and a bass-baritone Pilatus) have their own conductor, Grete Pedersen, but the entire performance is under Leif Ove Andsnes control. In Andsnes playing, there is little mystical calm and little sense of distance from the events. The piano is a full participant, and the music fits beautifully with the Consolations ("Six pensees poetiques"), also late works in which there is little trace of the crowd-gripping virtuoso Liszt. This album offers a new and fresh examination of one of Liszts least-understood works, and it is a major release from Andsnes. ~ James Manheim