When my colleague James and I blithely rolled up to Covent
Garden to hear Jonas Kaufmann and Lise Davidsen in Fidelio at
the beginning of March, I don’t think either of us had much of
an inkling that this would be the last live performance we’d
experience in the flesh for…well, who knows how long. Perhaps
that’s partly why this new recital-disc from the German tenor
and his long-term Lieder partner Helmut Deutsch has beguiled and
comforted me so much over the past few weeks, though the
prevailing mood of wistful nostalgia will surely speak very
directly to many others on its own terms in the light of recent
events.
Selige Stunde is palpably a product of these
distracted times: like Igor Levit’s Encounter and Daniel Hope’s
Hope@Home (both released today), it stems in part from the
artists’ music-making together in lockdown, something which
comes across strongly in terms of both the programming and the
interpretations themselves. As the interview in the booklet-note
explains, the album was recorded ‘in private quarters’ in Munich
after studios were closed for obvious reasons, and there’s a
lovely, unbuttoned intimacy to these performances which is quite
unlike anything they’ve previously set down in more conventional
recording-conditions. The choice of repertoire, too, is freer
and more wide-ranging than we’d usually expect from the pair,
taking in German-language settings from composers including
Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Zemlinsky, Dvořák, Strauss, and of course
Schubert: Deutsch describes it as ‘our personal wish-list’, and
there’s a special charm at the moment in hearing performers in
music which evidently brings them joy and solace in the
here-and-now. This is a programme which comes from the heart
rather than the head (or perhaps A&R department), and it shows.
Though songs dealing with isolation and longing for happier
times dominate, it’s by no means all doom-and-gloom: we kick off
with an ebullient reading of Schubert’s Der Musensohn, Deutsch
dancing around the voice with infectious energy and finding all
manner of nuance and variety in a piano-part which can so easily
verge on the mechanical in lesser hands. Kaufmann’s in
full-throated, robust voice here and in the ensuing account of
Beethoven’s Adelaide, where his ringing declamations of the
beloved’s name might prove rather too akin to Siegmund’s cries
of ‘Wälse!’ for some (personally, I loved it). In the interests
of full disclosure, there’s perhaps some slight vocal
awkwardness on one or two phrases here, as well as in Schubert’s
Der Jüngling an der Quelle, where it seems Kaufmann has to work
uncharacteristically hard to match Deutsch’s ravishing
celeste-like pianissimo. Elsewhere, though, his trademark
control across the whole dynamic range is as breathtaking as
ever, particularly in Strauss’s Allerseelen (somehow more deeply
felt and autumnal than on their previous recording, beautiful
though that was) and Tchaikovsky’s Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.
There are a few welcome rarities nestling in amongst the old
favourites, not least the tender, jazz-inflected Zemlinsky song
from which the album takes its title; Carl Böhm’s ardent Still
wie die Nacht (apparently quite literally a song Deutsch’s
mother taught him) is also a treat, but for me the pearl is
Friedrich Silcher’s Ännchen von Tharau, which wouldn’t sound out
of place in one of Beethoven’s folk-song collections from around
the same time and is delivered with simple eloquence by pianist
and singer alike.
The last two songs on the programme,
depicting withdrawal from the world, cut uncommonly deeply in
the current climate, and both artists do them proud: they find a
wonderful stillness in Wolf’s hymn-like Verborgenheit, whilst
Deutsch’s sublime shaping of the introduction to Mahler’s
valedictory Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen is worth the
price of the recording alone.
In an inadvertent reversal
of Dvořák’s Songs My Mother Taught Me, I introduced my own
mother (not usually a Lieder listener) to Kaufmann and Deutsch’s
YouTube performances earlier in lockdown, and her observation
that ‘they make you understand what the songs are about even if
you don’t speak German’ has stayed with me as I’ve dipped in and
out of the album – it’s no excuse for the lack of texts and
translations in the booklet, but struck me as a lovely summation
of the emotional directness of this recital. A blessed hour
indeed.