For Liszt’s 200th, a Youthful Tribute

今年がフランツ・リストの生誕200年に当たることは前にも書きましたが，リストがたいへん有名なピアニストでありながら，チャイコフスキーやショパンなどのように個人名を掲げた International Competition がないこともあって，今年は，Competition 歴がないままトップ・クラスに躍り出るピアニストが目立つのではないかと期待しています．　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ここにご紹介するのはその1例です．

この記事の最初には，リストが貧窮のうちに有名作品を残して世を去った多くの作曲家，例えばMozart，Shubert などと違って，たいへん経済的に恵まれた人生を送った事が紹介されています．

この記事の主人公は弱冠2歳の若き女流ピアニスト，Lise de la Salle で，評者は，彼女が the Metropolitan Museum of Art で行ったリサイタルを評価しています．　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　リストには，Beethoven や　Schubert に見られるような深遠な味わいは見られないのですが，dazzling, harmonically innovative, poetic and exciting として，Lise de la Salle に向いていると書き起こしています．

最近　Carnegie Hall で同様のリサイタルを開いたJean-Yves Thibaudet は，stressing the music’s elegance　だったけれども，Lise de la Salle は　took a more tempestuous approach, vividly characterizing extremes of tumult and introspection　と比較しています．

曲目は，
△Ballade No. 2 in F,　△“Funérailles.” Written to commemorate the execution of 14 Hungarian revolutionaries,　△the “Dante” Sonata，△Liszt’s arrangements of the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem; Schubert’s “Ständchen”; and Schumann’s “Liebeslied.” △Liszt’s version of Isolde’s “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,”　

とまことに多面的にリストを弾いて，その多彩な側面を十二分に弾き表したようです．As an encore, she offered a colorful and cleanly articulated if rather heavy-handed rendition of Scarlatti’s Sonata in C (K. 159). 　というのも，Lise de la Salle の優れた才能を現していて，興味深い選曲だと思います．

こうした若い才能の開花はまことに喜ばしいことだと思います．　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　あとは，ご自由にご渉猟下さい．

Music Review

For Liszt’s 200th, a Youthful Tribute

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

Published: February 21, 2011

Many 19th-century composers endured poverty, illness and artistic struggle, their achievements fully recognized only posthumously. Franz Liszt followed the opposite trajectory: he lived a glamorous life, rich in material and artistic success, but his reputation suffered in posterity.

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times  
Lise de la Salle performed Liszt for the composer’s bicentennial at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Still, though his music generally lacks the profundity of Beethoven’s or Schubert’s, it is dazzling, harmonically innovative, poetic and exciting. And it is well suited to the passionate temperament of Lise de la Salle, a glamorous, 22-year-old French pianist. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, Ms. de la Salle offered a Liszt program in honor of the bicentennial of the composer’s birth.

Anniversary years often provide the chance to hear how different musicians interpret the same composer. Jean-Yves Thibaudet recently played a Liszt recital at Carnegie Hall, stressing the music’s elegance. Ms. de la Salle took a more tempestuous approach, vividly characterizing extremes of tumult and introspection, as in the Ballade No. 2 in F, which begins with ominous rumblings in the left hand.

Ms. de la Salle has a powerful technique; she stormed through Liszt’s crashing torrents of chords and whirlwind runs with panache. But she also demonstrated a poetic musicality in the more introspective interludes, which she enhanced with colorful shading and phrasing.

Her muscular approach illuminated the nobility and monumental sweep of “Funérailles.” Written to commemorate the execution of 14 Hungarian revolutionaries, the work veers from funeral march to danse macabre to gentle melancholy.

Her emotive approach also rendered the “Dante” Sonata, a treat. The work represents Liszt at his most virtuosic and programmatic, with the soul’s descent into hell evoked in fiery cascades of sound.

Among Liszt’s most valuable contributions during his lifetime were his hundreds of piano transcriptions of operatic and orchestral works, which allowed the scores to be widely disseminated before the existence of recorded music. Ms. de la Salle offered vividly wrought and nuanced interpretations of Liszt’s arrangements of the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem; Schubert’s “Ständchen”; and Schumann’s “Liebeslied.” She concluded with Liszt’s version of Isolde’s “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” slowly building tension in the opening measures and increasing to a simmering climax.

As an encore, she offered a colorful and cleanly articulated if rather heavy-handed rendition of Scarlatti’s Sonata in C (K. 159).