|
|
|
|
The Times, October 19 2015 |
Geoff Brown |
|
Puccini-Konzerte: London, Royal Festival Hall, 17.10.2015 |
|
Jonas Kaufmann at Festival Hall
|
|
You know the sushi restaurant experience, with morsels passing on a conveyor
belt and the empty stomach that lingers no matter how many plates you lift
off? Frustratingly, here it was in concert form. Jonas Kaufmann’s new
Puccini album, Nessun Dorma, features 16 juicy vocal flights placed back to
back, but this Raymond Gubbay spin-off with the London Philharmonic
Orchestra and the conductor Jochen Rieder kept dotting the world’s star
tenor between too many instrumental interludes.
Orchestra 5, Kaufman
4: that was the score at the end of the first half, and the hunger pangs
were only increased by the recondite nature of the earliest material in a
programme arranged chronologically. Puccini’s fingerprints might be
plastered over operas such as Le Villi and Edgar, yet it took more than an
hour to reach Tosca and arias popular enough to raise an audience cheer.
Compensating pleasures included Puccini’s lambent orchestrations, the
elegant poise of the LPO’s woodwinds and heartfelt cries from the principal
cellist, Pei-Jee Ng.
Yet these weren’t quite what we came for. We
needed that voice, so flexible, focused and multicoloured. Occasionally
bolstered by throat-soothing lozenges, Kaufmann didn’t seriously disappoint.
He immediately revealed his dramatic and lyrical probity in the shifting
moods of Ecco la casa from Le Villi, though the evening’s full glories came
much later with his hushed pirouettes during E lucevan le stelle, the
controlled dynamic pacing of his Nessun dorma (no empty stadium rattler
here) and the sweet caress of his final encore, Licinio Refice’s prayer-song
Ombra di nube. I’d also hand the orchestra a bouquet for the melancholy
beauty of its Suor Angelica intermezzo — the final notes poignantly dangling
like threads from a forlorn spider’s web. If only this concert’s conveyor
belt had moved faster and contained more plates of Kaufmann.
|
|
|
|
|
|