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Financial Times, January 5, 2015 |
Richard Fairman |
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Liederabend, Wigmore Hall, London, 4. Januar 2015 |
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Jonas Kaufmann, Wigmore Hall, London — review
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The German tenor’s performance swung from poetic intimacy to
roof-raising passion |
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Rehearsals for the Royal Opera’s new production of Andrea Chénier must be
under way. The title role is being sung by Jonas Kaufmann and, while he is
in London, he found a space in his diary for a song recital at Wigmore Hall.
It was standing room only — no surprise when the programme was as packed
full of plums as a late Christmas pudding.
The role of Andrea Chénier
is based on the life of an elegant 18th-century French poet, though
Giordano’s music is full-throated, hammer-and-tongs, Italian passion.
Kaufmann is evidently gearing up for it, as the two sides of Chénier’s role
were already vying for the stage here.
At one moment Kaufmann would
be the poet, speaking the words with a soft, sensitive intimacy. At the next
his bronzed, Wagnerian tenor would raise the Wigmore’s roof. A curmudgeon
might say his singing was neither one thing nor the other. His admirers will
retort that he does both so well.
The first half was all Schumann. A
selection of five songs from the Kerner Lieder usefully warmed up the vocal
cords. Many singers would kill to end their recitals with a performance of
the rousing “Stille Tränen” half as powerful as this, not just slip it in
near the start. Having taken a back seat thus far, the poet then stepped
forward — aptly — for Schumann’s Dichterliebe (“A Poet’s Love”). Here
Kaufmann showed his versatility, putting across more of the words than the
average recitalist, and with an understated, simple honesty. The story of
the young man who loves a girl was beguilingly told. The single adjective
“heimlich” in another song went straight to the heart.
In the second
half two song cycles from the height of the Romantic era really gave the
audience its money’s worth. Kaufmann has sung Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder in
London before with orchestra. With a solo pianist as accompaniment, the
marvellously supportive Helmut Deutsch, he made something different of it,
an intimate avowal of love. Then Liszt’s Three Petrarch Sonnets — the
ultimate tenorial showpieces — took the singer to heights of ardour and
sensitivity, blazing top notes and whispered falsettos. Andrea Chénier’s
three hours do not hold more poetry and passion than this.
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