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The Independent, 22 April 2013 |
Michael Church |
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Konzert, Royal Festival Hall, London, 21. April 2013 |
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Classical review: Jonas Kaufmann, Philharmonia, Rieder, Royal Festival Hall, London
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Verdi or Wagner? Posing the musical question of the year, tenor Jonas
Kaufmann answers it by saying that he has vacillated between them, unable to
decide whose music he prefers. He finally declares that they are mutually
beneficial: "After singing Wagner you have an extra dose of power for the
drama in Verdi, and after singing Verdi, it is much easier to sing Wagner,
as the composer intended, with Italian legato." It was this latter course
that he adopted at the Royal Festival Hall, backed by the Philharmonia
Orchestra under Jochen Rieder.
Spanning the competing demands of
Wagner, bel canto, and Schubert Lieder, Kaufmann’s artistry has become
universally accepted as the benchmark for excellence, and it’s allied to a
magnetically attractive physical presence (hence the brooding full-page
photos in the programme). Since the first half of the evening would consist
of four Verdi arias, the bill of fare was bumped out with orchestral
interludes, the first of which was the overture to Luisa Miller, after which
Kaufmann came on with a disarming apology for bringing along his libretto
(too much travelling, no time to learn the words). But when he launched into
Rodolfo’s devastated ‘If only my eyes were deceiving me’ we immediately got
the full wattage: the burnished tone came over with spinto fury,
periodically dropping gracefully into half-voice, and the whole aria was
exquisitely shaded.
Thus was the pattern set for the evening: arias
interspersed with overtures from Nabucco, Simon Boccanegra, La traviata, Don
Carlo, and La forza del destino. And if the orchestral contributions were at
best run-of-the-mill, Kaufmann’s singing had a luminous beauty. The Wagner
arias which followed were even more remarkable. Siegmund’s ‘My father
promised me a sword’ had irresistible pathos, Walther’s account of his
musical education in Die Meistersinger radiated youthful ardour, and
Parsifal’s meditation on Amfortas’s sacred wound had mystical force; the
pace and colouring of each was fastidiously controlled. The audience’s
ecstatic response was the trigger for him to sing two of the bitter-sweet
Wesendonck songs on his new Wagner Cd as encores.
But this was a
celebrity promotion rather than a proper recital, in that the programme had
absolutely no musical structure, and the programme-book had no lyrics.
Before the next event in this so-called ‘opera season’, the least producer
Raymond Gubbay can do is ensure that the audience know what his stars are
singing about, rather than leaving them in the dark.
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