|
|
|
|
The Guardian, 6 January 2015 |
George Hall |
|
Liederabend, Wigmore Hall, London, 4. Januar 2015 |
|
Jonas Kaufmann review – grand vocalism and a glorious tone
|
The tenor’s voice was firing on all cylinders from the start; his mastery of vocal technique was amply demonstrated |
|
The star German tenor Jonas Kaufmann offered a substantial programme for his
Wigmore recital, with an all-Schumann first half followed by familiar sets
of songs by Wagner and Liszt in the second; but his voice was firing on all
cylinders from the start, with no sense of warming-up during his initial
selection of five of Schumann’s Kerner Lieder.
The scale of his
vocalism, here and throughout the programme, was grand, even at times
operatic, with a huge variety of tone on display including singing of the
finest delicacy, and other moments when his voice rang out with thrilling
intensity; the tenor’s mastery of vocal technique was amply demonstrated.
A closer identification with the detail of the text, though, would have
been welcome here and in the performance of Dichterliebe that followed:
Kaufmann’s interpretative gestures had a tendency to be broad and
generalised rather than specific and localised.
Where Dichterliebe
scored highly was in the unity of approach that Kaufmann and his excellent
pianist Helmut Deutsch provided, with the latter matching the tenor’s vocal
initiatives with an equally wide range of tonal colours. Moving swiftly on
from one song to the next helped bind the cycle into one complex statement –
even if some of the individual tempos chosen seemed on the sedate side.
In many ways the more lavish writing of Wagner’s Wesendonck Songs and
Liszt’s Three Petrarch Sonnets suited Kaufmann’s vocal largesse better than
the finer-grained intimacy of the Schumann settings. Deutsch, too, revelled
in the virtuosic piano parts of the Liszt songs, which have rarely seemed
more operatic than they did on this occasion. Yet however opulent the
singing, Kaufmann retained perfect control over his instrument, producing
some haunting effects and flooding Liszt’s effusive vocal lines with a
wealth of glorious tone.
|
|
|
|
|
|