GB RCA SB6690 ジョン・ブラウニング&エーリヒ・ラインスドルフ プロコフィエフ:ピアノ協奏曲1番/2番
セルゲイ・プロコフィエフのピアノ協奏曲はどれも難曲とされています。1932年、作曲者自身のピアノによって録音されたり第3番（HMV）にはじまり、ディミトリ・ミトロプーロスによる弾き振り（America Columbia)や、ウィリアム・カペル/アンタル・ドラティ(Victor)、ジュリアス・カッチェン/エルネスト・アンセルメ（Decca/SBT 1300)、サンソン・フランソワ/アンドレ・クリュイタンス(columbia)など数々の名演をうみ、1950年代には完全に「古典」として定着していましたが、プロコフィエフの生前に4番が演奏されたことはありませんでした。
1965年、この時代最高の超絶技巧を誇り、特に同じアメリカのサミュエル・バーバーからは絶大な信頼を寄せられピアノ協奏曲まで贈られたジョン・ブラウニングが、実に丁寧に編み上げられたエーリヒ・ラインスドルフのサポートを受けて、世界で初めてプロコフィエフの協奏曲全5曲の録音を実現。この偉業を決して忘れてはならない。あまりに鮮やかなヴィルトゥオジティはまったく色褪せず、圧倒するかのように我々の耳に響きます。
超弩級の名演。
鮮やかなヴィルトゥオジティはまったく色褪せず、我々の耳を圧倒する。
John Browning, Erich Leinsdorf conducting Boston Symphony Orchestra. – PROKOFIEFF ; Piano CONCERTOs Nos,1 and 2
卓越した超絶技巧と繊細な美音で知られる、20世紀アメリカを代表する名ピアニスト、ジョン・ブラウニング。RCAに録音したプロコフィエフのピアノ協奏曲全集より、1番と2番。ブラウニングの全盛期1960年代の録音は今聴いても素晴らしく、彼がヴァン・クライバーンのライバルとして全米を席巻していたことも頷けます。
Produced by Richard Mohr
Recording Engineer: Anthony Salvatore
１９６5年ボストン録音。
高度な技術が要求されるのはピアノ・ソロだけではありません。数多の作曲技法と音楽的アイディアを駆使したプロコフィエフの協奏曲は、オーケストラ部分も交響曲作品に負けず多彩な表現がなされ、演奏者もしくは聴衆を管弦的音響がおりなす蜘蛛の巣に絡めとるかのような魔術的魅力を持っています。このオーケストラ・パートを丁寧に、しかし各音の勢いを殺すことなく時に激情をあらわにもする、これ以上ないと思える完璧さで演じているのがラインスドルフ＆ボストン交響楽団。このバックだけでも必聴といえるほど。初にしていきなり、超弩級の名演の出現となったのです。
JOHN BROWNING grew up in Denver and Los Angeles. After graduating from Occidental College he came to Juilliard on scholarship and studied with Rosina Lhevinne. He is the recipient of first prize in three famous competitions: the Steinway Centennial Award sponsored by the National Federation of Music Clubs (1954), the Leventritt Award (1955) which enabled him to make his New York Philharmonic debut in February 1956, and the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition (1956). Since then he has concertized extensively; tours have taken him throughout the United States and Europe, to Mexico, the Near East and Russia. In 1962 he gave the world première of Samuel Barber’s First Piano Concerto with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Philharmonic Hall during the opening week of Lincoln Center.
“Compatibility between John Browning, the piano soloist,
and Erich Leinsdorf, the conductor, generated plenty of excitement…
they make a significant team.”
互いに刺激し合ったソリストと指揮者、ジョン・ブローニングとエーリヒ・ラインスドルフの相性は格別。理想的なコンビだ。
It was autumn of 1904. In an anteroom of the St. Petersburg Conservatory sat a 13-year-old boy and his mother. In his lap the boy proudly held two enormous folders containing four operas, two sonatas, a symphony and numerous pieces for piano.
The period of waiting seemed interminable, but finally the boy was ushered into the entrance-examination room, where he faced an imposing jury of professors, including Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glazounov and Liadov. Rimsky-Korsakoff took one glance at the boy’s compositions and could not contain his excitement.”Here is a pupil after my own heart!” he exclaimed.
The boy was asked to play a sonata by Mozart, which he performed to everyone’s satisfaction. Then he was stationed with his back to the piano and asked to identify various notes and chords that were played at random. The child had absolute pitch, and his answers were flawless. A few more tests, and finally the attention of the judges focused on the folders of music lying on the examination table.
The budding composer played through a part of his opera The Feast During the Plague, singing the vocal parts while Rimsky-Korsakoff turned pages for him. Then he played several of his piano works. With the passing of each moment the judges became more and more conscious of the fact that before them was a child gifted with an enormous musical talent.
The remainder of the examination was a mere formality. Soon the door to the anteroom was again opened, and this time the bearded Rimsky-Korsakoff announced to the nervous mother that her son was accepted into the Conservatory.
Maria Grigoryevna Prokofieva was justifiably proud. For years she had dedicated her energies to the encouragement and development of her only child’s talents. She had taken Seryozha from Sontzovka to Moscow, where the venerable Taneyev had quickly recognized his talents but had injured his pride by criticizing his primitive harmonies. She had arranged for Glière to tutor Seryozha at Sontzovka during the summers of 1902-4 and had watched approvingly as he inspired her son’s confidence and affection.
Little did Maria Grigoryevna suspect, however, as she heard the announcement of her son’s acceptance into the Conservatory, how stormy would be his next ten years of study. Seryozha loathed his harmony classes with Liadov and defied him at every opportunity. He found Rimsky-Korsakoff’s classes in orchestration to be a bore, although his respect for the composer never diminished.
Over and over his attempts at innovation met with ridicule and scorn at the hands of his professors, yet each disappointment seemed only to make the defiant youth more determined than ever to pursue his unique goals.
In December 1908 Prokofieff made his debut as a pianist at a public concert, playing seven pieces, including his subsequently famous Diabolic Suggestions. A few months later he completed his courses in composition at the Conservatory-to everyone’s great relief.
But he was not yet through. Thwarted in his search for recognition as a composer, Sergei Sergeyevich decided to turn his attention to the study of piano and conducting. He was accepted into the class of Anna Nikolayevna Yosipova, senior professor of piano and former pupil and wife of Leschetizky, but before too long he was rebelling again. Only his conducting mentor, Nicolas Tcherepnin, seemed to find a way to cope with the brash youth. First he deflated his pupil by announcing, “You have no gift for conducting, but I’ll teach you how to do it because I believe in you as a composer and I know you’ll have to conduct your own works sometimes.” Then having praised him as a composer he proceeded to demonstrate such interest and knowledge in modern music that the bewildered pupil was finally forced to confess, “He spoke so enthusiastically about modern trends in music that I almost felt out of date.”
The First Piano Concerto, Op.10, was begun in 1911, the year that Prokofieff made his debut as a symphonic composer and the year that witnessed the first publication of his music. Originally conceived as a concertino, the single-movement work was dedicated to Tcherepnin and first performed in Moscow on August 7, 1912, with the composer as soloist. It was his first appearance as a pianist with an orchestra.
Prokofieff considered the Concerto to be his “first more or less mature composition, both in conception and realization.” The style of piano writing is typically Prokofieff’s own, combining massive chordal effects with acrobatic leaps, unexpected intervals and a toccata-like rhythmic drive that was destined to become one of the composer’s trademarks.
The success of the First Piano Concerto led to two other outstanding piano works, both composed in 1912-his Toccata, Op. 11, and his Second Sonata, Op. 14. In the latter part of the same year, the composer began work on his Second Piano Concerto, Op.16. In his typical fashion Prokofieff begrudgingly accepted the criticisms of his First Piano Concerto and then proceeded to turn them to his own advantage. “The charges of superficial bravura and acrobatic tendencies in the First Con-certo led me to strive for greater depth in the Second,” the composer later remarked.
But with greater depth there also crept in a suggestion of nervousness and even morbidity (Prokofieff dedicated the Concerto to the memory of a very close friend, the pianist Max Schmidthof, who had committed suicide earlier that year). The enormously long, taxing and magnificent cadenza in the first movement is one of the highlights of the Concerto, as are the brilliance of the Scherzo, the harshness of the Intermezzo and the savagery of the Finale, with its superbly beautiful Russian second theme.
Prokofieff had not yet graduated from the Conservatory and was destined to have one more moment of triumph. Having been rejected as a composer, he was now determined to win the Rubinstein Prize as a pianist. His clashes with Yosipova had exploded into open warfare, even though the pupil was well aware that he had much to learn from her and the teacher recognized that here was a truly extraordinary student.
In the spring of 1914 Yosipova became seriously ill, and Prokofieff seized this opportunity to prepare himself in a unique manner for the competition. Instead of the usual fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier he selected one from the Art of the Fugue, and instead of the traditional classic concerto he decided to play his own First Piano Concerto.
The examining board refused to accept the latter substitution, claiming that their unfamiliarity with the work would make it difficult for them to judge his performance accurately. Prokofieff was not to be denied. He besieged Jurgenson, his publisher, with requests to have the piano score printed, and at a prearranged date well before examination time a piano score was delivered to each of the twenty examiners.
“When I came onto the stage,” the composer later recalled, “the first thing I saw was my Concerto spread out on twenty professorial laps-an unforgettable sight for a composer who was just beginning to see himself in print.”
The Concerto was brilliantly played by the composer. Despite the oppositions of the strong academic segment of the jury, the Rubinstein Prize was awarded to Prokofieff. A few days later the Concerto was performed again, with great success, at the graduation exercises, with an orchestra under Tcherepnin’s direction. The triumph was duly reported in the St. Petersburg press, and Prokofieff was well on his way to world fame.
IGOR BUKETOFF
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