Jim Sohre reviews Jonas Kaufmann's new CD of extracts from Wagner, in Opera Today. Read the full review here, it's pithily written ! Here is an extract :
"Kaufmann’s “baritonal” quality has been controversial, and as with many other tenors who trained as baritones..... he lacks the easy ringing high notes and the desperate-seeming quality of reaching for high C’s and beyond with an almost orgasmic youthful impulsion. The voice is trending to darker qualities, and while he has attained them with an admirably schooled and calculated strategy, he may be obliged to evade them in time. This will cause dissatisfaction in some quarters, among the tenor obsessed, but ..............., it need not do so. For complete personas within a drama, he is a performer worthy whatever fame is currently offered a leading dramatic tenor."
"What Kaufmann appears most to enjoy, from both his statements and the evidence of the current album, is the opportunity for inner dialogue, for playing with the character Wagner has devised with words and psychological acumen as well as music. Dynamics go up and down (which speaks well for his Berlin engineers), as if at times he were singing to himself, at other times explaining that self to an audience held spell-struck by his sermon".
"Kaufmann’s “baritonal” quality has been controversial, and as with many other tenors who trained as baritones..... he lacks the easy ringing high notes and the desperate-seeming quality of reaching for high C’s and beyond with an almost orgasmic youthful impulsion. The voice is trending to darker qualities, and while he has attained them with an admirably schooled and calculated strategy, he may be obliged to evade them in time. This will cause dissatisfaction in some quarters, among the tenor obsessed, but ..............., it need not do so. For complete personas within a drama, he is a performer worthy whatever fame is currently offered a leading dramatic tenor."
"What Kaufmann appears most to enjoy, from both his statements and the evidence of the current album, is the opportunity for inner dialogue, for playing with the character Wagner has devised with words and psychological acumen as well as music. Dynamics go up and down (which speaks well for his Berlin engineers), as if at times he were singing to himself, at other times explaining that self to an audience held spell-struck by his sermon".
No comments:
Post a Comment