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Observer, 06/30/20 |
By Harry Rose
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Mahler: : Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 29. Juni 2020 |
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Jonas Kaufmann and the Bavarian State Opera Perform Sad Songs for a Hopeful Audience
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In the earliest weeks of the pandemic, the days spent in lockdown passed at
a glacial pace. And for cultural acolytes, those days crept by even slower
without live performances to break up the monotony. However, as the
infection rate has begun to precariously subside in Europe, where classical
music receives both more public attention and more government support to
make a phased reopening of theatres viable, the stay on live performances
has begun a slow and calculated thaw.
In Italy, summer opera venues
in Rome, Pesaro, and Macerata will perform in accordance with revamped
health and safety policies. In Vienna, the Philharmonic and the Staatsoper
are opening their doors to limited numbers of distanced patrons. And in
Munich, the Bavarian State Opera’s 2019-2020 season concluded Monday
afternoon with the final live-streamed Monday Concert, featuring Music
Director Kirill Petrenko and the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Academy.
The standard Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss fare was
performed to a sprinkling of live spectators, with native Munich superstar
tenor Jonas Kaufmann making an appearance for Schönberg’s orchestral
reduction of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.
The
pairing of Kaufmann and Petrenko intrigues—the elusive tenor is famous for
his burnished, covered sound and slow-burn approach to the music he sings,
whereas Petrenko’s prevailing tactic is one of ebullient clarity and detail
with carefully built climaxes throughout. Though their approaches often
differ, both share a hyper-calculated approach to music making that
alternately dragged and lifted Monday afternoon’s performance.
Mahler’s four-song fahrenden Gesellen dates from 1897 and, composed at one
of the numerous gloomy junctures in his lifetime, features maudlin texts by
the composer himself. Right off the bat, Kaufmann teased out smooth,
mahogany-colored phrases and thoughtful inflection as the Wayfarer immerses
himself in his own sadness. However, that smoothness did not extend across
his range—the upper reaches of his voice, once capable of a crooning
resonance, instead sounded taut and parched.
And if Kaufmann’s rigid
control over the music showed in how attentively and dignifiedly he handled
the panicky, unsubtle texts, his singing displayed a more recalcitrant
instrument that never quite settled into the ensemble with Schönberg’s
reduction. In reducing and reorganizing the orchestral forces of Mahler’s
symphony-sized ensembles to chamber orchestras, Schönberg both augmented the
intimacy and mysticism of Mahler’s music as well as put the voice more
directly in concert with the other instruments, like an instrument itself.
But a textured, Grammy-winning voice like Kaufmann’s can hardly be called
“instrumental” and his performance, supported lushly throughout by Petrenko
and the Orchestra, seemed tentative, if thoughtful, rather than decisive.
Decisive, however, was the name of the game for Petrenko who opened
the program leading students of the Orchestra Academy in a rich and moody
reading of Schönberg’s first Chamber Symphony. Capturing the piece’s
quicksilver mood changes with verve, Petrenko sculpted the Symphony into
undulating climaxes and gave Schönberg’s tense, academical music a kinesis
that was palpable even in my living room. The wily, dancy Pulcinella suite
that followed was somewhat less persuasive, with Stravinsky’s ironic
neoclassical finials and skill as an orchestrator mostly swallowed by an
ensemble that spanned the entire stage playing a more grandiose approach
than might make sense for a work originally conceived for dance. The
afternoon concluded with a performance of a jocular suite of incidental
music from Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme that perfectly captured
Strauss’s ebb and flow.
The phantom applause from the hundred
admitted patrons at the end of the performance still managed to, over the
internet, sound like the hall itself was full. Applause for Petrenko,
Kaufmann, the continuation of live music, and the reluctant conclusion of
the season that could not be.
This concert will be available for free
on-demand at Staatsoper.tv for 30 days starting July 2.
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