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Financial Times, 19 February 2018 |
Richard Fairman |
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Wolf: Italienisches Liederbuch, London, 16. Februar 2018 |
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Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann, Barbican, London — a fine performance of Hugo Wolf songs
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The soprano and tenor gave a rewarding account of Wolf’s
Italienisches Liederbuch |
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A generation ago the exalted soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf often advertised
her solo recitals with the rider “programme to be announced”. When the
audience turned up, they would find the evening given over entirely to the
songs of Hugo Wolf. She knew that if she had owned up earlier, the hall
would have been half empty.
The situation has improved since then.
For their joint European tour this month, the soprano Diana Damrau and tenor
Jonas Kaufmann had no compunction in presenting complete, evening-long
performances of Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, his series of 46 settings
of concentrated nuggets of Italian poetry, translated into German. It helps
that Damrau and Kaufmann are stars of the opera stage, both at the peak of
their pulling power, so tickets were at a premium.
To help sell Wolf
to a reluctant public, Schwarzkopf, a tireless champion of his songs, used
to indulge in nods and winks, which earned her the criticisms “arch” or
“coy”. Damrau and Kaufmann went in for even more. Although the songs are all
solos, relationships suggested by the poems were acted out, with results
that were at best amusing in a camp sort of way, and at worst (in the more
light-hearted songs, gathered together before the interval) positively
irritating.
In every other aspect this was a fine performance. Damrau
is not often seen as a song recitalist in the UK, but she has a pointed way
of delivering the words, except for a few occasions when she sacrificed
intelligibility for drama, and a wide range of emotional responses. The
flirtatiousness of many of these songs was lightly captured and the
evening’s accompanist, Helmut Deutsch, matched her in every detail.
Kaufmann is more broad-brush as a song recitalist, but he sings the words
naturally while keeping an eye on the vocal line. The Mediterranean
sultriness behind these Italian poems asks for a voice with romanticism
built in, and Kaufmann’s dark, brooding tenor has that to spare. He was
especially memorable in the slow, heartfelt songs that came after the
interval. Schwarzkopf was right about one thing: Wolf was a great song
composer and in the right hands a recital devoted to his music can be
immensely rewarding.
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