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San Francisco Classical Voice,
August 20, 2002 |
By Janos Gereben |
Edinburgh Festival, August 2002: Die
schöne Müllerin
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Kaufmann: an Exciting Voice from Munich
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Voice Sources: Head/Chest, Brain/Heart |
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EDINBURGH - Of the three noteworthy recitals I
heard Saturday, two tenors (!) used the gray matter above the oral cavity
excellently well, and one mezzo didn't. Jonas Kaufmann is an exciting
discovery, Ian Bostridge sings more admirably than ever, but Michelle
DeYoung now needs to be reclassified from homecoming queen to a TV anchor on
a small local station. .....
......No encores, alas, for Kaufmann's recital. It is part of the festival's
"radical" new series of late-night concerts in Usher Hall. Starting at
10:30, programmed strictly for an hour, and using a large donation from the
Royal Bank to set all ticket prices at 5 pounds, it's a wonderful series,
except for its unimaginative name ("Classical Music Every Night for 5
Pounds"), and it brings hundreds of new listeners to great classical music.
Kaufmann, a 33-year-old from Munich, with pop-star looks, hair to rival
DeYoung, performed Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, a song cycle that fits
the hour-long format exactly. Accompanied by Viennese-born, Munich-resident
Helmut Deutsch (the piano cradling and uplifting the voice), Kaufmann
exhibited focused, warm intelligence, passion appropriate to the songs, and
a very interesting voice. Or voices. Three of them.
There is a velvety lyric tenor on top, a hint of steel beneath, and
somewhere in-between or on the side, a high baritone. Normally, when you
hear a singer with "voices," it can drive you up the wall. Kaufmann has
successfully integrated them and what is obvious is a beautiful lyric voice,
used superbly, and then some of the other stuff if you bother to analyze it.
Perhaps the only reason I paid much attention to the exact nature of the
voice was a startling item in the bio note. Along with Tamino, the Berlioz
Faust, Barber of Seville, etc., it said there, in print: "Otello in
Chicago." Between that note and my ears, I trust the latter more and I'd
suppose the writer must have meant "in Otello," probably Cassio. Over the
weekend, correspondents from Chicago confirmed that Cassio it was, an
excellent one. |
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