Fantasies & Delusions (Opus 1-10 Music for Solo Piano)＜完全生産限定盤＞

ビリー・ジョエルが、長年温め続けた2001年発表のソロピアノ集『Fantasies & Delusions』
(邦題:ファンタジー&デリュージョン～ミュージック・フォー・ソロ・ピアノ)を最新リマスター音源でアナログ盤発売

2001年作品。93年のアルバム『リヴァー・オヴ・ドリームス』を最後に 新曲中心のポップ・アーティストとしての活動から離れると宣言し、ビリーの書き下ろしクラシック・ピアノ曲によるインストゥルメンタル・アルバムにして、現時点で最後のスタジオ・アルバム『Fantasies & Delusions』(邦題:ファンタジー&デリュージョン～ミュージック・フォー・ソロ・ピアノ)。ビルボード・クラシック・アルバム・チャートで初登場1位を獲得し、ビリーが8年間書き溜めたピアノ・ソロ曲を、長年の友人であるピアニスト、リチャードチュ・ヒョンギが演奏している。2023年最新リマスター音源でアナログ盤発売。

It was pretty clear that Billy Joel had run out of steam by 1993's River of Dreams. He had shown signs of wearing on its predecessor, Storm Front, but his trademark melodic gift disappeared on River of Dreams and his words, even performances, were bone-tired -- he even called the last song "The Last Song (No More Words)." So, it was no great surprise that he did not rush to record a follow-up, and when he started murmuring toward the end of the decade that perhaps he wasn't interested in pop music anymore, nobody who paid attention could have been surprised. And it wasn't a surprise that he decided to turn toward classical music since, by that point, it had become a cliche for pop musicians who wanted to be taken seriously. What is a surprise is that the resulting project, Fantasies & Delusions, is pretty successful -- it's a nice collection of pleasingly modest, melodic solo piano pieces, mainly sonatas, written by Joel and performed by Richard Joo. Joel succeeds because he kept his ambitions reasonable and was smart about presentation. He didn't compose symphonies, he wrote piano pieces and passed them off to somebody who could play them dexterously in the way they were meant to be played. It's actually charming, since it's possible to hear Joel diligently working within the forms of classical music while retaining the recognizable melodic flair of his pop work. These are still not pieces that you'll wind up humming, but as pop/classical crossovers go, this is among the best in recent memory -- better than McCartney's operettas and symphonies, better than Joe Jackson's stilted work. And it's a hell of a lot more rewarding than River of Dreams. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine