先週のベルリンフィルの興奮がまだ醒めない中なのですが、ロンドンフィルのコンサートにでかけました。
プログラムが面白そうだったのと、一度、ロンドンフィル主任指揮者のユロフスキの指揮ぶりを見てみたかったためです。
ユロフスキはクルト・マズアの後任として、昨年度のシーズンからロンドンフィル主任指揮者に抜擢された若手指揮者です。何と1972年生まれ！！！指揮ぶりはめちゃ格好いいです。
２曲目はマーラーの交響曲第２番「復活」の第一楽章の元ネタになった曲です。演奏が始まったとたんに、びっくりでした。チェロ、コントラバスで始まる重奏の迫力に、肝を抜かれました。チェロ10名、コントラバス8名の大編成。緊張感のある素晴らしい演奏でした。
最後のMeinz Herz brennt (My Heart is on Fire) - orchestral song-cycle with variations は英国初演の現代曲。作曲のTorsten Raschは、1965年生まれのばりばりの現役です。大編成のオケによる大迫力のある音楽と声楽、そして「語り」のミックスチャーによる作品で、とても興味深いものだった。いわゆるクラシック音楽とは、一味もふた味も違うので、演奏後の拍手も、大拍手とさっさと帰る人とが入り混じった評価のわかれた感じでした。ただ、僕はとても良かったと思います。
今日はいつも以上にピンボケ。後段にある和太鼓も途中で使われました。
ソリスト勢ぞろい。右の白いジャケットを着た小柄な女性から左に順番に、ナレーターのKatharina Thalbach、バス Rene Pape、ソプラノElisabeth Meister、UDUK（アジア風のピッコロのような笛）のMartin Robertson
Royal Festival Hall
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sunday 31 May 2009, 7.30pm
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No.5 in D, Op.105 (Reformation)
Gustav Mahler: Todtenfeier
Interval
Torsten Rasch: Meinz Herz brennt (My Heart is on Fire) - orchestral song-cycle with variations UK premiere
Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Rene Pape bass
Katharina Thalbach narrator
Elisabeth Meister soprano
2009年5月31日
※6月4日追記 各紙の批評も意見が割れています
タイムズ紙は厳しいです
June 3, 2009
LPO/Jurowski at the Festival Hall, SE1Hilary Finch
A new orchestral song cycle enters the world, championed by the London Philharmonic and Vladimir Jurowski: surely a cause for great rejoicing? Well, I only wish I could say it was. But at the end of 80 minutes of Torsten Rasch’s Mein Herz brennt (“My heart is on fire”) I felt numbed and underwhelmed by the over-extension, over-inflation and overweening hubris of the work.
The cycle’s concept is tempting — irresistible, even, to anyone with a taste for German song. Rasch sets eight lyrics by the industrial metal group Rammstein, allowing their neo-Romantic versifying, at times sentimental, at times violent, to collide with the full force of a vast Mahlerian orchestra, heavy also with the harmonic references and orchestral textures of Wagner, Strauss and Zemlinsky. As with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde the score makes great use of exotic percussion, and of two soloists: here a bass-baritone (Rene Papé, in splendid voice), a soprano (Elisabeth Meister, high in the organ loft) and a reciter (Katharina Thalbach, in naughty schoolgirl shirt and tie, and with several risible voices.) Despite a four-star performance, the collision of these two worlds emasculated them both. The lyrics (banal or deeply meaningful, depending on your view) lost the visceral energy of their heavy-metal origins. And the sprawling encyclopedia of German Romantic and Expressionist languages simply made the work seem a grotesque and self-indulgent caricature. The idea could have worked with stark, pungent chamber-musical forces — as in Hans Zender’s famous Expressionist take on Winterreise — or with at least some angle of irony to engage the listener. As the work stood, it showed merely a bad case of misjudgment in those who committed such huge resources to the project.
Although it did few favours to Rasch’s music, it was a clever idea to precede his work with a powerfully taut performance of Mahler’s Totenfeier, the original version of the first movement of his Second Symphony. And, before this — a distant memory, alas, by the end of the evening — Jurowski conducted a lean and lithe performance of Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. ★★★☆☆
フィナンシャル・タイムズ紙（6月4日）は満点でした
LPO, Royal Festival Hall, London
By Richard Fairman
Published: June 2 2009 22:43 | Last updated: June 2 2009 22:43
The German rock band Rammstein is notorious for its outrageous performances. Stunts have included simulated sex, nudity and engulfing one of the band in fire. That their songs should have inspired a vast and highly-regarded classical song-cycle is difficult to believe.
Throughout this season Vladimir Jurowski has been keen to show how adventurous he wants his time as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra to be. Some of the big new works he has been introducing have been decidedly hit-or-miss, but by bringing to London the first UK performance of Torsten Rasch’s Mein Herz brennt, written in 2002, he scored a bull’s-eye.
The only word that can sum up this piece is “wow”. When he came on to take his bow Rasch looked like John Tavener’s German twin, but his music could hardly be more different. For more than an hour the audience was assailed by a massive onslaught of decibels from a larger- than-100-piece orchestra, over which an amplified bass and female speaker did their best to be heard. The music is of the kind that German composers after Mahler and Strauss might have written if Schoenberg had not led them down a dark alley called “Twelve-tone”. Here is a super-romantic tidal wave of sound that leaves the listener sometimes near to drowning.
The words to Rammstein’s punk/heavy-metal songs work surprisingly well. There is an epic quality that is just right for Rasch’s heightened Wagnerian settings and it is only a shame that it was part of the composer’s concept all along that René Pape’s authoritative bass should be amplified. Katharina Thalbach gave the spoken texts everything she had, sounding part Kurt Weill specialist, part demented child escaped from The Exorcist. The LPO glittered with detail, as it rode the tsunami of Rasch’s wildly extravagant orchestral writing.
As if one unusual work in the evening was not enough, Jurowski also included rarely heard pieces by Mendelssohn and Mahler. It was not clear what link either Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 5, the “Reformation”, or Mahler’s Totenfeier had to the Rasch extravaganza, but both had been scrupulously rehearsed and Jurowski kept the audience gripped. Not the sort of concert that comes round often. ★★★★★
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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