バタフライ・ラヴァーズ&パガニーニ

2枚組の重量盤LPでリリース
クロエ・チュア演奏のバタフライ・ラヴァーズとパガニーニ。
東から西へ、爽快なヴァイオリン協奏曲を奏でる。

2007年生まれのシンガポールの天才ヴァイオリニスト、クロエ・チュア(蔡珂宜)。『ヴィヴァルディ&ロカテッリ』に続くPENTATONEレーベル第2弾『バタフライ・ラヴァーズとパガニーニ』が2枚組の重量盤LPでリリース。

2018年、ユーディ・メニューイン国際コンクールのジュニア部門で優勝したクロエ。11歳での優勝は世界中で話題となり、instagramなどのSNSで彼女の演奏動画が拡散されたことで有名に。2024年現在17歳のチュアはシンガポールの国民的人気を博す若手実力派ヴァイオリニストとして注目されています。

作曲家チェン・ガンとヘ・チェンハオ共作のヴァイオリン協奏曲「バタフライ・ラヴァーズ」は、古代中国のロミオとジュリエットとも呼ばれる物語にインスパイアされた作品。ヴァネッサ・メイが演奏し世界中で知られることとなり、現在はフィギュアスケートでもおなじみの楽曲となりました。西洋音楽と京劇の要素を巧みに融合させた名作として多くのヴァイオリニストが演奏しております。技量の見せどころ満載のパガニーニの協奏曲では、チュアの実力を証明する驚きの演奏を披露。今後ますますの活躍を期待せずにはいられないヴァイオリニストのひとりです。
PENTATONE

Just 16 years old when these two live recordings were made, Chloe Chua has already spent two years as an artist-in-residence with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and she is definitely looking like a rising star from that part of the world. (The concerts were sellouts.) It was perhaps curiosity about the youngster that put this album on classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2024, but buyers are likely to be pleased with what they get. Chua has a restrained tone marked by accuracy over flamboyance, and this is in some of the more flamboyant concertos in the repertory. However, she avoids a studied attitude; she is quite graceful. Her style works especially well in the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, a 1959 work from China that listeners may know even if they dont think they do; it is a favorite in figure skating competitions. Chuas toned-down rendering eliminates much of the socialist-realist-era sentimentalism and emphasizes the novel mixture of Chinese and Western elements in the work. She also does well in Sunshine over Tashkurgan by Chen Gang, one of the composers of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto; this is a fascinating work in which a Chinese composer treats Central Asian materials as exotic. Chua is likewise quite restrained in Paganinis Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 6, a work that some may think was made to be fiery, but Chua gets all the notes, including the most difficult ones, apparently without breaking a sweat. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra under conductors Rodolfo Barraez (in the two Chinese works) and Mario Venzago (in the Paganini) lowers the intensity level to correspond with Chuas playing, and the whole thing hangs together well despite the diversity of repertory and the fact that the album puts together material from different concerts. Is Chua the next major Asian star? Time will tell, but it is possible. ~ James Manheim