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BBC Music Magazine |
Barry Millington |
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Humperdinck: Königskinder
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Jonas Kaufmann, Ofelia Sala, Detlef Roth, Nora
Gubisch, Jaco Huijpen, Henk Neven; Latvian Radio Chorus; Orchestre National
de Montpellier/Armin Jordan Label:Accord Cat No:476 9151 Run Time:164:45
mins Performance:****
Sound:***** |
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For
many Humperdinck devotees Königskinder is even more fascinating and moving
an opera than the better-known Hänsel und Gretel. This new recording was
made live last year in a concert performance at the Festival de Radio France
et Montpellier. Its star is Jonas Kaufmann, whose passionate,
fresh-voiced King’s Son is easily on a par with that of Thomas Moser in
Profil Hänssler’s reissue (reviewed in February) of the 1996 Calig
recording, conducted by Fabio Luisi. Ofelia Sala is a very acceptable
Goose Girl, but doesn’t have quite the spontaneity or innocence of Luisi’s
Dagmar Schellenberger, let alone the touching girlish quality of Helen
Donath on the 1977 EMI recording under Heinz Wallberg (currently
unavailable). The orchestral playing is adequate, but Armin Jordan is less
well attuned than Luisi to the work’s blend of pathos and heartwarming
compassion. Nor does Detlef Roth greatly inspire in his incarnation of the
key role of the Minstrel – the mysteriously prescient blind fiddler who
first encourages the Goose Girl to fulfil her destiny and finally organises
the burial of the doomed couple by the new generation of children,
warmer-hearted than their unfeeling parents. Luisi’s Dietrich Henschel is
preferable here, though only Wallberg’s incomparable Hermann Prey ideally
suggests both the sense of deep sorrow and glimpse of a better world. |
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