One in a mill
With recording companies scrambling for shares of a disappearing classical market, I would have thought a new recording of Schubert’s great masterwork, even by one of today’s most exciting tenor voices, would have been way down the list. And unlike Renée Fleming or Susan Graham, Jonas Kaufmann has never spouted a burning desire to explore the great song literature. I was expecting to hear a beautifully sung, rather generic performance, with the occasional nod towards a passing textual nuance.
I am happy to report I was wrong on all counts. This is a marvelous recording, full of life, emotion, and color. Kaufmann’s singing is not only drop-dead gorgeous throughout, but he brings a youthful vigor and fresh perspective to songs that have become tired and over familiar to many listeners. For me, it was like listening to a series of wonderfully acted solo scenes in a very personal one-man opera.
Without sacrificing taste or musicality he uses his remarkable vocal resources to explore the internal emotional landscape of a young man lost in love. In every song there was a phrase here, an inflection there, or an unexpected vocal choice that brought something new and fresh to something dry and over-familiar. A single example will suffice to illustrate my point. In “Ungeduld,” note how many different ways Kaufmann finds to sing the climactic phrase “Dein ist mein herz und soll ist es ewig bleiben,” before his final, triumphant affirmation of a love that we know will never be.
He is matched in every respect by the remarkable playing of Helmut Deutsch. From the first notes of “Das Wandern” to the final chord of “Des Baches Wiegenlied,” the accompaniment comes to vivid life though loving attention to detail and remarkable articulation. I’ve never heard it played better.
Most Baroque operas….their whole entirety!
Harry, as I’ve asked before, which part of (I presume) Europe are you from? I always assume somewhere like Denmark, but I could be wrong.
Monty Nostry;’Down Under’!
Well, Harry, I hope you support the Vicar’s Commonwealth artists!
JK has been singing The Fair Maid of the Mill internationally for a decade or more. He gave several lieder recitals at the Edinburgh Festival in the early 2000s including Müllerin and a fantastic Dichterliebe, coupled, if I recall, with Schubert and Liszt. Two summers ago he toured a recital including Britten’s Sonetti di Michelangelo (written for PP and they sounded very different, dark, Italianate and passionate rather than tight-arsed English prissy)and a selection of Strauss from his first solo album. He is also probably the best tenor soloist at the moment for Das Lied von der Erde. So yes, he does sing quite a lot of lieder, and rather more idiomatically than either Mmes Fleming or Graham. Once again we seem to be in If-it-hasn’t-happened-in-New-York-it-hasn’t-happened land. He’s supposed to be singing Schöne Müllerin at the Wigmore this Autumn, so presumably he is touring the record and will show up with it in New York sometime next season.
Sorry but I don’t think there is any evidence that Puccini had “painted himself into a corner” with regard to the end of Turandot. It is an established fact that he was fighting the final stages of his cancer at the time and was very unwell.
Although no one is sure- there was evidence to suggest that it would end with Turandot’s demise- and to suggest he was struggling with “how to do it” surely seems far fetched? He was more than capable.
As to the “short end” I’ve always held the belief that much credit is due to Alfano. Instead of taking it as an opportunity to put his own signature on a master’s work, his clever use of all the existing themes throughout, was an unselfish act and full of integrity. To me, that much is pretty clear.
Harry dear- so fat sopranos are mainly “Commonwealth” gals are they? I won’t think too hard but I had no idea Tetrazzini came from Liverpool or Manchester.
Re: The ending of Turandot–Puccini may not have painted himself into a corner, but he certainly created a difficulty for himself in having to quickly segue from the heart-wrenching death of Liu to a happily-ever-after resolution for Ms. Caligula and Mr. Death Wish.
In 1980 I saw a semi-staged performance of Busoni’s version of Turandot in Berkeley, conducted by Kent Nagano in his Berkeley Symphony days; to my surprise, the Liu-equivalent was nothing like her Puccini counterpart. Busoni follows the original Carlo Gozzi play more closely, and instead of the self-sacrificing Liu we have Adelma, a slave in Turandot’s court, who recognizes Calaf from her past but holds her tongue, thereafter ingratiating herself with him while simultaneously offering to give her mistress his name in exchange for her freedom.
Puccini intended to keep the original happy ending for the principals, but had now created a virtually new character who has stolen the audience’s sympathies away from them. Liu’s death is too close to Butterfly’s for comfort, and it’s as though Puccini was faced with the task of concluding Butterfly with a joyful reconciliation duet for Pinkerton and Kate after Cio-Cio San’s suicide. If that’s not painting yourself into a corner, I don’t know what is.
P.S. I LOVE the Ping-Pang-Pong scene.
SF Guy- “Puccini intended to keep the original happy ending for the principals”- sorry SF Guy – not wanting to seem arguementative but the fact is nobody knows what he intended – his notes were not clear at all and that has been well documented. One documentary I saw concerning this matter was very clear that there was no indication given either way and the few notes he did leave were in effect contradictory.
I too love Ping Pang Pong- so at least we agree there
Ruxton–I don’t pretend to be a musical scholar, but everything I’ve absorbed from casual reading/lectures on the subject over the years has indicated that the changes Pucciini kept requesting in the libretto after the death of Liu dealt with the text of the final duet, not anything so drastic as changing course and killing off the titular heroine. This would certainly have been a far more drastic departure from the source material than any that occur in his other operas. In the absence of hard evidence that he was seriously considering this, I’d consider it highly unlikely. However, if recent scholarship has unearthed evidence in support of the idea, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.
In the Busoni version, the two-faced scheming of the slave-girl Adelma is revealed, and she’s sent off in disgrace to sulk, making it much easier to justify a tidy upbeat ending for Turandot and Calaf. It’s theoretically possible Puccini found that composing love music strong enough to shift our sympathies from the tragic Liu back to the woman who engineered her death was a more difficult task than he’d realized when he took the role of the slave-girl in a whole new direction. So it’s theoretically possible he considered chucking the source material completely at that point and have Turandot die as well. But since I’ve never heard the possibility broached before now, I’d like something a bit more concrete than “Since he died when he did, we’ll never know his final intentions.”