シティ・ライツ

チャップリンと思い入れのある都市がテーマのユニークなLPアルバム

ジョージア出身のヴァイオリニスト、リサ・バティアシュヴィリの最新アルバム『City Lights』から最も人気のある曲を選び、10インチLPにまとめたスペシャル・エディションです。2021年7月にジョージア・フィルハーモニー管弦楽団と録音した最新トラック『デサフィナード』も収められています。
「シティ・メモリーズ」は、2019年に生誕130年を迎えたチャップリンの音楽と映画に触発されたメドレーを作るというバティアシュヴィリとラグヴェリのアイデアから作られました。楽曲は個人的、音楽的につながりのある都市にちなんだ曲が選ばれ、すべて新編曲で録音されています。
ユニバーサル・ミュージック/IMS

Violinist Lisa Batiashvili is at the stage in her career where a crossover album, aimed at making her a marquee draw, was called for. It would have been easy for her put together an album filled with the likes of My Heart Will Go On, and it is to her credit that she has devised a release that is altogether more original. The title City Lights has a dual meaning: it refers to the suite of music by Charlie Chaplin that opens the album (its still forgotten sometimes that he was a composer as well as a filmmaker), and to the set of pieces that follow, each of which is associated with a city having significance in Batiashvilis life and career. These range across Europe, also including Buenos Aires and New York, and concluding in the violinists native Georgia, in Tbilisi. The idea is clever, but its the execution that really clicks. Working mostly with composer Nikoloz Rachveli, Batiashvili offers a mixture of classical selections, popular songs, semi-popular virtuoso or dance works, a Piazzolla tango, and, for the recent death of Ennio Morricone, the Theme from Cinema Paradiso. Rachvelis arrangements tie the program together well, even with dual orchestral accompaniments from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Georgian Philharmonic (Rachveli conducts both), and leaves room for considerable expressiveness on Batiashvilis part. A fine example of a crossover release.