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The Times, January 6, 2015 |
Hilary Finch |
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Liederabend, Wigmore Hall, London, 4. Januar 2015 |
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Jonas Kaufmann - Wigmore Hall
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Standing room only and no admission to the green room afterwards unless
booked. This is the sort of evening it was with tickets as high as £100,
Jonas Kaufmann packed Wigmore Hall for a recital of mainstream Schumann,
Wagner and Liszt.
Kaufmann is the German recitalist who has become
ereryone’s favourite Italian operatic tenor. And although only a lieder
connoisseur would start his recital with Schumann’s Kerner Lieder, Kaufmann
brought a whiff of bel canto even to these songs. Just five from the Cycle
were used shamelessly as warm-up material, the voice languid, flexing its
muscle, but then finally hitting the spot in one of the song repertoire’s
most powerful moments. Stille Tränen (Silent Tears) rose from the mist of
dream, floated in head voice, to a crescendo of lacerating paine as the work
Schmerz was hurled from the singer’s lungs to the audience’s heart.
Shumann’s Dichterliebe was the evening’s centrepiece. Kaufmann’s relaxed
stage presence and simple gestures created moments of intimacy within an
otherwise heroic performance. The ballasted baritonic regions of his voice
carried the surge of the Rhine, the weight of anger and loss. And in the
fragile emotional life of Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet, Kaufmann’s superb
breath control created desolation in some of the slowest, quietest singing
the song has known.
Helmut Deutsch, always sentient and supportive as
piano accompanist, came into his own in Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, which
Kaufmann sang thoughtfully and with deceptive ease. In Liszt’s Three
Petrarch sonnets his tenor reached the apotheosis of Italianite bravura for
which it had been longing all evening. and then a surprise which brought
back the frisson factor: a tiny, hushed encore of Mondnacht from Schumann’s
Op39 Liederkreis, a miracle in half-voice, suspended in awe and wonder.
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