In the course of discussing possible contenders for our ongoing
Great Recordings by Decade series with colleagues last week, I
found myself once again singing the praises of a magnificent
2006 recital of Strauss Lieder from Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut
Deutsch which has given me untold pleasure over the past fifteen
years and would certainly accompany me to my hypothetical desert
island should the need arise. That album (which won the vocal
category at the following year’s Gramophone Awards) never ceases
to knock me sideways thanks to the delicacy and declamatory
splendour of Kaufmann’s singing and the nuance and imagination
of Deutsch’s pianism, but I think today’s Recording of the Week
might just surpass it on both counts.
Conceived during
lockdown and recorded last summer in Germany, the programme is a
mixture of songs which have been in the pair’s repertoire for
many years (the demanding Petrarch Sonnets, delivered with
proper Italianate ardour, were the highlight of their Barbican
recital in 2017) and others which Kaufmann explored for the
first time whilst on enforced sabbatical last year, and the
thrill of new discovery registers keenly at various points
throughout the recital.
Things get off to an arresting,
even acerbic start with Vergiftet sind meine Lieder (‘My Songs
Are Poisoned’), which as Deutsch points out in his personable
and insightful booklet-note is a second cousin of sorts to ‘Ich
grolle nicht’ from Schumann’s Dichterliebe, written just a
couple of years earlier; it also seems to look forward to
Liszt’s son-in-law’s Tristan und Isolde, particularly when
dispatched with the metallic bite and angry fervour which
Kaufmann supplies here. (Preparations for his first Tristan were
presumably well underway when the recording was made, and the
programme includes several further ‘teasers’ for that
long-awaited role-debut, with fleeting musical allusions to the
opera popping up in Es war ein König in Thule and most
explicitly in Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam).
Two
contrasting settings of the Goethe poem from which the album
takes its title follow, the first highlighting both Kaufmann and
Deutsch’s matchless gifts for spinning long legato lines and
finding innumerable colours within the constraints of pianissimo
- here, as throughout the programme, Kaufmann eschews that
trademark ‘crooning’ which polarises many listeners, keeping
everything entirely ‘on the voice’ and beautifully focused. Then
the gloves come off for a high-octane, thrillingly dramatic
account of Es war ein König, which builds from conversational
intimacy to near-Wagnerian grandeur as Deutsch conjures a wealth
of brassy colours to depict the king’s faithful retainers and
the gloomy splendour of the ‘castle by the sea’ and Kaufmann
responds with an intensity worthy of the dying Tristan.
The macabre, unsettling Die drei Zigeuner is another real
highlight, with Kaufmann characterising the three gypsies quite
brilliantly, and Deutsch working uncanny magic in the long,
quasi-improvisatory introduction depicting the gypsy’s fiddle –
although this marvellous pianist devotes himself almost
exclusively to song repertoire, I’d give my right arm to hear
what he might do with the Hungarian Rhapsodies (or indeed any of
Liszt’s solo piano works, come to that). The Petrarch Sonnets
find Kaufmann in absolute peak vocal form, cresting the top Cs
with ease and showcasing that distinctive, bronzy glow which has
won him such success in Verdi and verismo roles; there’s not so
much as the merest hint of wear and tear from a decade of
Florestans, Parsifals and Siegmunds, and he yields nothing to
the rather lighter voices usually associated with these songs
when it comes to flexibility and youthful lyricism.
It’s
wonderful, too, to hear a handful of songs which remain relative
rarities on disc and in recital, such as the lovely Die Stille
Wasserrose (a particular favourite of Deutsch’s) and the
lengthy, Weltschmerz-laden Ich möchte hingehn, where Kaufmann
again taps into the Tristan-esque longing for oblivion to
dramatic effect. All in all, this is quite the finest recording
he’s made for Sony, and a testament to one of the greatest
Lieder partnerships of our time.