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Daily Mail, 27 April 2013 |
By David Mellor |
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Konzert, Royal Festival Hall, London, 21. April 2013 |
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Where Jonas Kaufmann really wins is in his beauty of tone
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Jonas Kaufmann, Royal Festival Hall, London |
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German tenor Jonas Kaufmann is the business.
Mix his smouldering good
looks with a beautifully honed voice and an acute musical intelligence, and
you’ve got a singer with few rivals today.
Indeed, I can think of
only one, the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja. Kaufmann is Domingo to Calleja’s
Pavarotti, and we’re lucky to have the choice.
Kaufmann is here for a
run of Don Carlo at Covent Garden starting on Saturday.
Happily, the
indefatigable Raymond Gubbay – whom God preserve because he’s been putting
on great shows for almost half a century without a penny of public subsidy –
also snapped up Kaufmann for a gig celebrating this year’s two big
birthdays, Verdi and Wagner, both of whom were born in 1813.
Kaufmann’s Verdi is still work in progress, but since the premature death of
Fritz Wunderlich back in the Sixties, I can’t think of a German tenor who’s
so at home in Italian opera.
Maybe Kaufmann’s Puccini is more
idiomatic than his Verdi, but at the Royal Festival Hall he still treated us
to some splendidly phrased, full-bodied singing in connoisseur’s-choice
arias from Luisa Miller, Simon Boccanegra, The Force Of Destiny and, of
course, Don Carlo: music of real depth and subtlety.
After the break
came the Wagner: bits and pieces from The Valkyrie, The Mastersingers and
Parsifal, plus a fistful of encores that must surely have proved to any
doubters – not, of course, including me – that here is one of the few
singers of today who bears comparison with anyone from the golden age of
Wagner; singing that petered out more than 40 years ago.
Kaufmann’s
command of Wagner’s idiom is near total, but where he really wins through is
in his beauty of tone.
I can’t think of another Wagner tenor active
today who has it, and very few in recorded history who rival him in this
regard.
In this excellent recital he was well partnered by his
colleague from the Zurich Opera, Jochen Rieder, and the Philharmonia, on
good form given how little rehearsal time Gubbay’s tight budget allows.
All the orchestral extracts sounded well, with the Philharmonia
woodwind, led by clarinettist Andrew Marriner, a recent signing from the
London Symphony Orchestra, contributing some distinguished solos.
By
the way, if you want to hear how good Kaufmann’s Wagner is, his new Decca
all-Wagner CD, issued earlier this year, is well worth a listen.
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