マイ・ライフ・イン・ミュージック

ラフマニノフの最後の弟子、97歳の女性ピアニストによる最新アルバム

2022年1月15日に97歳の誕生日を迎えたアメリカのピアニスト、ルース・スレンチェンスカは昨年、自身の気持ちに最も近いソロ・ピアノ音楽で最新アルバムを録音しました。
スレンチェスカは4歳でステージ・デビューをしてから92年、今でも演奏を続けています。ラフマニノフを始めとする20世紀の偉大なピアニストたちに師事し、ケネディ、カーター、レーガンなど歴代の大統領の前で演奏しました。
デッカにはアルバムを10枚録音していますが、最後の録音は60年前でした。
日本へも度々来日し、公演を行う一方で教育にも力を注いでいます。
「モーツァルト以来の最も偉大なピアノの天才」(オリン・ダウンズ[アメリカの音楽評論家])と称されています。
ユニバーサル・ミュージック/IMS

This release by the 97-year-old pianist Ruth Slenczynska received plenty of publicity, understandably enough, and it landed on the best-seller charts in March of 2022. Slenczynska did not emerge from nowhere as a kind of old-age prodigy; she taught for many years at Southern Illinois University, wrote a raft of articles about piano pedagogy, and made some recordings, including a group for Deutsche Grammophon when she was in her eighties. As a child, Slenczynska studied with Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Josef Hofmann, and Sergei Rachmaninov, and she is the last living student of the latter. This alone makes the album worth ones while, for it offers a direct link to Rachmaninovs own playing. Slenczynska leads off with a pair of Rachmaninov works, and she produces, or reproduces, a distinctive style, with lots of rubato on the small scale but not the large. She transfers it to other works where it is appropriate, like a pair by Barber. There are also Chopin, Grieg, Debussy, and finally Bach, and there are very few places where one is aware that one is dealing with a 97-year-old; Slenczynska knows her limitations, and only the Chopin Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, is close to the edge. A charming bit of trivia is that the producer of the album, David Frost, is the son of Thomas Frost, who produced Slenczynskas first release for the Decca label in 1956. This may not be Slenczynskas final release, either; she is said to have signed a new deal with Decca. Whatever the case, it is an important historical document.