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Seen and Heard International, 25/10/2021 |
by Harvey Steiman |
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Liederabend, Berkeley, 25. Oktober 2021 |
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Jonas Kaufmann tops off his American tour with a paean to the art of lieder
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Famed Tenor Delivers a Riveting Musical Feast |
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Nine encores. Perhaps that’s the best way to summarize how Jonas Kaufmann
delivered an object lesson on galvanizing an audience in his recital Sunday
afternoon in Zellerbach Hall. In each of the 22 songs on the printed
program, he lavished his pliant tenor on every nuance, bursting with power
one moment, shrinking to poignant intimacy the next.
And there wasn’t
an aria in the bunch. All of the songs, he told the audience at the
beginning, were favorites of his and his longtime piano partner, Helmut
Deutsch. Most of them appear on his two most recent albums, so they are
securely in his voice. The program, sung all in German whether it was the
original language or not, managed to create a high level of personal
connection in a 2,689-seat auditorium.
Seamless legato and unerring
control in the final song on the program, Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen’ (from the Rückert-Lieder), had the rapt audience holding
its breath. The carpet of silence under music sung with such artistry
produced a magical effect, and Deutsch’s sensitive playing of the
floating-in-air introduction and coda framed the song with supreme grace.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, ‘Vergiftet sind meine Lieder’, the
first song in a set of nine by Liszt, opened the concert with a torrent of
heroic tenor sound. (The program translated the opening line as ‘My songs
are filled with poison’.) Better known for his flamboyant piano music, Liszt
is a composer who seldom shows up on lieder programs. In Deutsch’s hands the
showy keyboard music was refined enough to underline the character of each
of the nine songs. The sensual ‘O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst’ was one
highlight. The ballads – ‘Es war ein König in Thule’ and especially ‘Die
drei Zigeuner’ – made the biggest impression as Kaufmann took on each
persona with flair.
In the quieter moments of the Liszt songs, a bit
of rough edge ruffled the softer phrases. The tenor even muffled a couple of
coughs. But none of that happened in the second half of the program (or the
encores), when Kaufmann voiced every phrase with total command.
If
there was a through-line to these 13 songs, it was simply love. It started
with general happiness in nature’s beauty in Schubert’s skippy ‘Der
Musensohn’ and rose to spiritual devotion in Zemlinsky’s ’Selige Stunde’,
which seemed to float serenely. A mother’s love invested Dvořák’s ‘Als die
alte Mutter’ (which we anglophones know as ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’) and
Brahms ‘Wiegenlied’ (‘Lullaby’), sung with such affection that one could
picture a quiet family scene.
After the exquisite Mahler song that
closed the printed program, the parade of encores began with another heroic
Liszt song, ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares sein’ (‘A wondrous rapture must it be’)
before lightening the mood with Schubert’s ‘Die Forelle’ and luminous
‘Mondnacht’.
Good as those were, the greatest gems emerged in the
final five, starting with ‘Träume’, the finale of Wagner’s
‘Wesendonck-Lieder’ which calls to mind the Tristan und Isolde love duet.
Three Richard Strauss songs hit different emotions with precision and
refinement – the crisp dance of joy in ‘Breit’ űber mein Haupt’, the hope
and confidence of ‘Morgen!’ and the sheer euphoria of ‘Cäcilie’.
A
gloriously heart-on-sleeve rendition of ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’, Lehár’s
anthem of anthems for tenors everywhere, was the cherry on top.
Curiously, Kaufmann and Deutsch kept us all guessing on the encores,
choosing not to identify any of these songs. With each one, they came out
for one curtain call and went offstage, and when Deutsch returned carrying
sheet music, the audience erupted in cheers. This process milked ever more
applause with each encore. We only knew the tap was shut when Kaufmann,
returning for a second curtain call after the Lehár show-stopper, blew the
audience a big kiss goodbye.
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