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International Record Review, April 2013 |
Hugh Canning |
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Wagner - Jonas Kaufmann - IRR OUTSTANDING |
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With
every new solo album — and increasingly appearances in complete opera
recordings on disc and DVD —Jonas Kaufmann establishes himself as the
outstanding lyric-dramatic tenor of his generation. Although he is less
known as a Wagnerian in the UK — not, of course, in his native Germany and,
more recently, New York — than as Verdi-Puccini verismo tenor and perhaps
the greatest Don Jose in Carmen since the glory days of Jose Carreras, he
has streadily and surely been working his way towards the great Heldentenor
parts. At Brian McMaster's final Edinburgh Festival (2006) he essayed the,
to date, only Walther von Stolzing of his career in concert (although he
intimates in a booklet interview with the German vocal expert Thomas Voigt
that he has future plans to sing the role in the theatre) and since then has
added Parsifal, Lohengrin and Siegmund to his repertoire. All three of those
roles were featured in his thrilling German opera 'arias' album —'Mozart to
Wagner' — conducted by Claudio Abbado (reviewed in October 2009).
Now
he delves into roles which he is still undecided about singing onstage and,
most remarkable of all, a performance of the Mottl orchestrations of
Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder. Of course these settings of poems by his
unreciprocating beloved, Mathilde Wesendonck, a married woman, were written
for 'Frauenstimme' (a woman's voice) but Kaufmann argues persuasively that
Wesendonck's texts, particularly that for 'Im Treibhaus' (In the Hothouse'),
reflect the exiled Wagner's state of mind. The Wagner hero most obviously
missing from this selection is Tristan, the protagonist of an opera partly
written under the spell of his unrequited love for Frau Wesendonck, but, of
course, two of these songs are 'studies' for Tristan and Isolde and share
the music-drama's hothouse atmosphere of amorous delirium and its chromatic
harmonies.
By curious chance, on the day I sat down to write this
review, a reissue of Rene Kollo's 1992 Electrola recording of the
Mottl-orchestrated song sequence, with the same Deutschen Oper orchestra,
conducted by Christian Thielemann, no less, dropped through my letter box.
By the time Kollo came to set the songs down — in a Wagner-Strauss programme
that includes the closing scene of Act 1 of Die Walküre and two Lieder by
the other Richard, Strauss — 'Verführung', Op. 33 No. 1 and the last of the
Four Last Songs, 'Im Abendrot' — he had complete recordings of most of
Wagner's Heldentenor roles behind him, his first Stolzing (Karajan/ EMI) as
long before as 1970. Already a Wagner veteran in his mid-fifties in 1992,
Kollo can't compete with the 43-year-old Kaufmann for beauty of tone,
thrilling Italianate attack and his Lieder singer's ability to convey a
sense of intimacy and privacy in what are perhaps the most personal and
touching vocal works of his maturity.
Runnicles invariably adopts
brisker tempos for Kaufmann than Thielemann does for Kollo, and they sound
more naturally suited to the younger tenor's Italianate legato and deeper
emotional exploration of the texts. Kollo's dry-sounding tenor, with the
hint of an incipient beat, is taxed by Thielemann's slow-coach tendencies,
while Runnicles is more supportive of his singer, and the orchestra,
superbly recorded by Decca, plays quite wonderfully throughout for its
current Generalmusikdirector.
In the operatic excerpts, of course, it
is immersed in its bread-and-butter repertoire —even Rienzi, from which
Kaufmann sings the title hero's 'Allmächt'ger Vater' as if it were a bel
canto prayer, is in the Deutschen Oper's, though not Runnicles's, current
repertoire.
Kaufmann returns to Lohengrin's Act 3 narration 'In
fernem Land', which he recorded on the Abbado-conducted album, but here it
is heard in an original, two-verse version, from which Wagner cut the second
fearing it would bore audiences. In his interview Kaufmann refers to a
'beautiful' 1930s recording by the great German Lohengrin, Franz Volker,
which I have never heard, but in the modern era he has the field to himself.
Despite the claims of other contemporary Lohengrins, I can't believe anyone
today — or for the last quarter of a century — has sung this music with the
combination of musical poetry, range of colour and heroic climaxes that
Kaufmann achieves here. This is golden-age Wagner singing by any standards
and Kaufmann is a thoroughly modern artist, vividly 'present' rather than
heard as if in a time warp.
In Siegmund's Sword monologue, his
communicative delivery of the narration is capped by cries of 'Wälse', which
seem to last for a small eternity: you have to go back to the young Vickers
on the Leinsdorf/Vienna recording of Die Walküre — just re-released by
Decca's Australian subdivision, Eloquence — to hear such virile, visceral
singing of this dark, baritonal part and Kaufmann's German, of course, makes
Vickers's sound inauthentic. Vickers probably had the larger voice, but
Kaufmann never sounds stretched. After Stolzing's 'Preislied' in Decca's
debut album ('Romantic Arias', conducted by Marco Armiliato, reviewed in
February 2008) Kaufmann gives us 'Am stillen Herd' from Act 1 of
Meistersinger — a performance of ideal tonal radiance and youthful glamour,
but the real revelations are the Forest Murmurs sequence from Act 2 of
Siegfried and Tannhäuser's Rome Narration, music he is singing for the first
time here.
I doubt if Siegfried is on his immediate wish list for
theatre debuts, but if and when he comes to sing it onstage, I hope he
preserves the spellbinding freshness and naivety he conveys in the
delinquent hero's tender imagining of what his mother might have looked like
and his first encounter with the (not-yet-singing) Woodbird. I don't think I
have ever heard this passage more beautifully or movingly sung, certainly
not in the theatre and rarely on record.
Wagner would surely have
loved to hear his words and music sung with such a refined sense of their
indivisibility by a singer in complete command of his instrument and with
such an imaginative sense of verbal and musical phraseology. The disc is a
must-hear for dedicated Wagnerians for this superlative track alone (the
Deutschen Oper's instrumental Waldvögel excel themselves here, as if trying
to 'outsing' their tenor).
Tannhäuser is a role Kaufmann might also
have demurred at singing complete onstage —Vickers famously withdrew from
debuting the part at Covent Garden in the 1970s, though supposedly on moral
rather than vocal grounds. He confesses in the interview that he has turned
down all offers for the role, but intimates that his experience with the
Rome Narration has made him change his mind. Perhaps he should save it until
he has sung all of the French and Italian lyric roles he plans for the near
future, but this astounding account of, arguably, the most taxing, extended
monologue in Wagner's entire output after Tristan's Act 3 ravings, whets the
appetite to experience his Tannhäuser live. He brings a Tristanesque agony
and ecstasy to Wagner's words and music — running the gamut from an archaic,
hymnic style in the description of the Pilgrim's appearance in Rome to an
almost expressionist ranting in 'Da ekelte mich der holde Sang' ('The holy
singing was repugnant to me') and a sardonic whining in his imitation of the
Pope condemning him to eternal damnation. This is dramatic singing of the
highest order, unmatched by any singer in a complete recording of
Tannhäuser.
With this disc, Kaufmann asserts his position not only as
the outstanding Wagner tenor of his day but one of the greatest of all time.
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