Jonas Kaufmann is a lucky man.
While much of the music
world has reeled during the pandemic, he has had the luxury of
reflecting, recharging, and revisiting old musical haunts:
Lieder.
The results are exceptional; a lovely album,
maybe Kaufmann’s best recital disc yet.
Intimacy
Be
it because of these strangest of times, the uncommon recording
space (it was recorded in “private quarters”), Kaufmann’s
personal affection for the repertoire, or the special rapport
between singer and accompanist (Helmut Deutsch), this album
feels intimate. It feels like a turn inward.
Kaufmann
sounds completely at ease. Past non-operatic projects —
especially his go at Italian songs and operetta fare– though
quite good have been overly touched by exactitude and certain
tics: cue the mannered vocal throbbing.
Not so here.
This album exhibits that classic oaken sound, but with a variety
of textures and colorations. There are revelatory moments when
he achieves a kind of lightness that is not the result of an
unsupported voice or a souped-up mic, but of an ever-more
astounding technique that allows for vocal dexterity.
The tenor’s efforts are all kept in line by the prodigious
talents of Deutsch whose playing — elegant, focused, and clear–
provides a clear spine for each piece without sacrificing
intensity.
A Generous Program
This album is loaded
with familiar songs and perennial chestnuts mostly in the
Germanic repertoire.
But this is not a greatest hits
collection. The artists have carefully selected a range of
thematically linked songs going back to Mozart passing through
Schubert and arriving at Mahler and Strauss (though not in
chronological order).
The dominant theme is simple:
love.
There is the excitement and expectation of young
love in a feathery take of Schubert’s “Der Musensohn” and in
Beethoven’s twinkling “Zärtliche Liebe.” Longing and regret
pulsate in Tchaikovsky’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.” More
declamatory expressions of love come through a multi-hued
reading of Edvard Grieg’s “Ich liebe dich” and in an unfettered,
robust take on Strauss’s “Zueignung.” And there are nods at
non-romantic affection too with a predictably gentle “Cradle
Song” by Brahms and a wistful rendition of Dvořák’s tear-jerker,
“Als die alte Mutter.”
The core of the album comes midway
with two songs that avoid extremes, while still expressing
bliss. Shooting above any earthiness of “I love you” or “I miss
you,” the title track “Selige Stunde” by Alexander Zemlisky
speaks of transformation, of a kind of love that takes you to a
higher plane. In Chopin’s irresistibly gorgeous melody (as
arranged by Alois Melichar), “In mir klingt ein Lied,” there is
more “stunde” to be heard as love blossoms into “tender music.”
The effectiveness of Kaufmann’s talents are most audible
in these two tracks; models of tonal beauty and elegant
restraint. Fireworks have gone off, but there is nothing forced
in how the songs are sung– casual, gentle, and in this way a
touch decadent.
There is, however, a twist. As the album
closes, it starts to detach from romance in any traditional
sense and starts a journey toward solitude. The singer wanders,
alone, into nature. Schubert’s atmospheric “Die Forelle” is sung
with a wry smile, a more brooding excursion follows in
Schumann’s “Mondnacht” and then, at the very end, there is
nothing.
The album’s last two tracks arrive at a sort of
quarantine. Kaufmann is forlorn, anxious, and finally resigned
in Hugo Wolf’s “Veborgenheit.” With purposeful quietude amid
light and shade, the disc ends with Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen” and with the appropriate final phrase, sung
in turn sweet and with resonance: “I live alone in my heaven, in
my love and in my song.”
In the liner notes Kaufmann says
that this recording took him, and implicitly us, “closer to the
zeitgeist of these pieces, most of which were originally
performed in more intimate settings, namely, in private
circles.”
This seems fitting and essential for the times
when we find ourselves in desperate need of vast vistas from the
safety of our homes. The world, for a moment at least, has
become smaller but music helps cover lost ground.