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Seen and Heard International, 20/05/2018 |
Alan Sanders |
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Konzert, 19. Mai 2018, London, Barbican Hall |
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Jonas Kaufmann Proves Less than Ideally Suited to Lieder by Richard Strauss
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The main focus of this concert, postponed from February 2017, was Jonas
Kaufmann’s controversial performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs. And just
so that we should realise that fact, the work was presented as the final
item, the climax of a rather oddly devised programme. Whether or not
Kaufmann had any qualms about singing this work, there was a slight sense of
strain as he produced the opening low notes that begin the first song,
“Frühling”. And soon one had the feeling of a miscast soloist. Strauss’s
orchestration is written to match the sounds of a voice that can soar above
the instrumental lines in a way that has been so effective in performances
by great sopranos of yesterday and today. Kaufmann’s voice, rooted in a
lower register, simply did not have the chance to emerge sufficiently from
the orchestral accompaniment, even though Jochen Rieder’s handling of the
BBC Symphony Orchestra players was admirably sensitive and discreet. The
words of “September” are not quite appropriate for a male performer either,
even though Kaufmann produced a nice tone quality in this song, as he did in
“Beim Schlafengehen” and in the final “Im Abendrot”, where he well conjured
an effect of what might be described as stillness, a peaceful acceptance of
the inevitability of death, as intimated in Eichendoff’s text. So, there was
much to admire in Kaufmann’s singing per se, but some female performers of
the work have invested it with more singular characterisation.
The
one encore, Strauss’s Morgen!, produced the most beautifully rapt singing of
the evening, rather better than Kaufmann’s rendering of four Strauss songs
in the first half of the concert. The first three of these were rather
similar in mood and largely reflective, and Kaufmann responded
appropriately, but not seemingly with enormous conviction. He managed the
positive ending of ‘Befriet’ skillfully, and the livelier ‘Heimliche
Aufforderung’ had a good heroic feeling, but in general this was not the
finest interpretation of Strauss Lieder that one has heard.
Jochen
Rieder began the concert with a rarity, Korngold’s Schauspiel Overture,
written when the composer was just 14 years old. The influence of Strauss is
obvious in this piece, as are hints of other composers of the day and the
music hall. As in so much of this composer’s music you feel that something
important is going to happen, but it never quite does. The gulf in quality
between the music of Korngold and Strauss was immediately demonstrated in
Rieder’s tender performance of the second interlude from Strauss’s opera
Intermezzo, with its lovely, long flowing melodic line and exquisite
scoring. Here and in his accompaniment to the Strauss songs Rieder’s
conducting was indeed most impressive: at the beginning of the concert’s
second half he also directed a passionate, very exciting account of Elgar’s
In the South, with the varied and contrasting episodes of the work strongly
characterised and with brilliant playing from the BBC SO. Somewhat
perversely, perhaps, I would suggest that Jochen Rieder was the hero of the
evening.
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