世界で50万枚以上のベストセラー・アルバムが、180gアナログLP盤で限定発売

ラルペッジャータは2000年に結成されたテオルボ奏者クリスティーナ・プルハーが指揮を務めるバロック・アンサンブル。メンバーは今日を代表するヨーロッパのソリストで、加えて彼らは著名なバロック歌手や古典音楽とのコラボレーションも行っています。ほとんど知られていないレパートリーを蘇らせること、主に17世紀初頭のイタリアやナポリの音楽に重点を置いています。ラルペッジャータの音楽のベースとして挙げることができるのは即興演奏、古典音楽に影響を受けた歌唱法の進化に重点を置いた既存のものとは異なるアプローチ、魅力的なステージを造ることが特徴的で、世界中で高い評価を得ています。この最新アルバムでは、ゲスト歌手としてフィリップ・ジャルスキー、ドミニク・ヴィス、ヴィンチェンツォ・カペッツートの3人のカウンターテナーが起用されているのも注目。単なるパーセルの作品をそのまま歌うのでは無く、古楽器だけでなくピアノやサクソホフォーンなども登場し、即興を含めたジャズの要素を含めた独特なアレンジは現代的で幻想的に感じられるに違いありません。
ワーナーミュージック・ジャパン

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2020/05/01）

This is an entirely novel treatment of Henry Purcell's music that may appeal greatly to experimentally minded listeners, but those mulling the purchase should be perfectly clear about what they're getting into. "Improvisations on Henry Purcell" is not quite the right subtitle. There are elements of improvisation, it's true, but really these are arrangements of famous Purcell songs and arias, most of them by L'Arpeggiata leader Christina Pluhar. A few of the pieces are performed straight, but most of them are very far from the conventional Purcell sound world, drawing on such diverse genres as rock (the opening 'Twas within a furlong and Strike the viol, both complete with electric guitar), world music, other Baroque styles, various styles of jazz, and even lounge music, applied to the sublime When I am laid in earth, from Dido and Aeneas. Plainly there is a subset of listeners who will be absolutely driven crazy by this release, but just as plainly it gets major points for utter originality. Its strength lies in the fact that it is not simply a jazz or rock version of Purcell but a wholesale rethinking of an antique repertoire for a stylistically diverse modern musical world. Pluhar commands the services of an all-star trio of countertenors including Dominique Visse, Philippe Jaroussky, and Vincenzo Capezzuto, along with soprano Raquel Andueza; the singers generally sound like they're having a great deal of fun, and listeners should check the album out just to hear some hitherto unknown possibilities of the countertenor voice (try Visse's turn in Man is for the woman made). Despite all the craziness, Purcell's tunes are left generally intact, and this is another of the album's strengths. Things go seriously astray only with the bonus track, an inexplicable version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah by Capezzuto, but those hooked on the album's ideas by then will be inclined to accept it as the kind of excess that comes with original projects. The future of early music? Probably not, but who knows?

Rovi