ジェズアルド: サクレ・カンティオーネス

イル・ポモ・ドーロが
ルネサンスの前衛作曲家ジェズアルドに挑戦!

近年古楽界で最も注目される団体のひとつイル・ポモ・ドーロ。この合唱団がルネサンス異端の作曲家ジェズアルドの「サクレ・カンティオーネス」に挑戦しました。カルロ・ジェズアルド(1566-1613)はナポリの貴族の家に生まれ、作曲家としてマドリガーレや宗教曲を作りましたが、極端な半音階や不協和音などほとんど現代音楽ばりの作風を示すなど激しい気性を反映させていました。

ストラヴィンスキーが絶賛し、20世紀作曲家たちを驚させた彼の代表作をテノール歌手としても有名なジュゼッペ・マレット指揮のイル・ポモ・ドーロがフレッシュに再現。演奏が非常に難しいことでも知られますが、彼らは正確なうえ激烈な表現も驚きで、420年を経てジェズアルドが思い描いていた音世界が完璧に実現しました。超注目のアルバムです。
キングインターナショナル

The historical performance ensemble Il Pomo dOro, from Switzerland, has taken on a choral component, and this release, with Giuseppe Maletto as director, is its first unaccompanied choral release. The initial impressions are very good. The groups slogan on social media is "We have the guts"; this refers to the gut strings used by the orchestra but could also apply to the sound of the choir -- an ideal 12 voices, mixed-gender and adult, from whom Maletto gets some grain. The sound matches these motets of Carlo Gesualdo beautifully. These pieces have a deeply penitential tone that has been linked in listeners minds with the composers murder of his wife and her lover. Maletto points out that a motet written in the 1580s, before the murders, has the same tone, but texts like that of Laboravi in gemitu meo ("I am weary of my groaning; every night wash I my bed and water my couch with my tears"), not often set by composers, do seem to have a stark, intense quality. Whatever the biographical implications, the music does have a subjective quality that is unusual in sacred music, and Maletto strikes a fine balance that catches it without making the pieces sound like madrigals. The result is an unusually satisfying recording of these works, which are less often recorded than the late Tenebrae Responsories. It is enhanced by idiomatic sound from the Chiesa della Confraternita dei Santi Rocco e Sebastiano in Cumiana, Italy, transparent enough to bring out the texture of the voices. ~ James Manheim