Jonas Kaufmann IT'S CHRISTMAS!

 

IT'S CHRISTMAS!

Wiener Philharmoniker / Valery Gergiev / Jonas Kaufmann SOMMERNACHTS KONZERT 2020

SOMMERNACHTS KONZERT 2020

 

Jonas Kaufmann / Helmut Deutsch SELIGE STUNDE

SELIGE STUNDE

Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Antonio Pappano VERDI Otello

OTELLO

Diana Damrau / Jonas Kaufmann / Helmut Deutsch ITALIENISCHES LIEDERBUCH

 

Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann, reigning stars of opera, are also consummate interpreters of song. In early 2018, with master pianist Helmut Deutsch, they performed Hugo Wolf’s multi-faceted Italienisches Liederbuch in 12 cities around Europe. “One couldn’t ask for more,” wrote the Telegraph after their London concert, which took place two days before this live recording was made in the German city of Essen.

DIE KLASSIK-BESTEN

"Klassik-Besten" presents the highlights of the current classical music scene and combines the glamor of big stars with the stars of tomorrow in the starry sky of classical music. The exclusive double CD presents famous melodies - interpreted by outstanding world-class artists. The sexy spectrum ranges from classic top stars like Anna Netrebko and Lang Lang to young stars like Sheku Kanneh-Mason and offers only the best of the best in the classical world: With Cecilia Bartoli, Jonas Kaufmann, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Daniil Trifonov, Andrea Bocelli , David Garrett, Daniel Hope, Joyce DiDonato, Il Divo, Sol Gabetta and many more.

Selected masterpieces invite to sensual experience, immersion and relaxation. In addition to Beethoven's fabulous "Moonlight Sonata" or "Solveig's Song" from the Peer Gynt Suite, the excellent selection features immortal moving melodies, such as the enchanting "Ave Maria" by Bach and Gounod, the famous aria "Nessun dorma" by Puccini or Benny Andersson World Success "Thank You For The Music". Both classical and curious people can discover and enjoy great masterpieces with this high-quality album - a glittering firework of classical music.

Jonas Kaufmann / Anita Rachvelishvili AN ITALIAN NIGHT

 

A magical evening dedicated to beautiful Italian music with the world’s greatest tenor. Captured live for release on CD. Featuring Anita Rachvelishvili. This is the key release this year from “The world’s greatest tenor” (The Telegraph). This summer Jonas presented his most popular Italian repertoire live from Berlin’s outdoor amphitheatre Waldbühne (Forest Stage). Jonas brought the house down with a succession of hits from his extremely popular ‘Dolce Vita’ programme as well as exciting arias and duets (with mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili) from the Italian opera repertoire.

Jonas Kaufmann / Wiener Philharmoniker / Jonathan Nott MAHLER Das Lied Von Der Erde

In an interview that serves as the sleeve notes for his recording, Jonas Kaufmann describes his first encounter as a student with Das Lied von der Erde, in the classic recording conducted by Otto Klemperer. Kaufmann says he immediately tried to emulate Klemperer’s incomparable soloist Fritz Wunderlich in the three tenor songs, but doesn’t reveal whether at that stage he thought he could sing the three other numbers too, which Mahler designated for either a contralto or a baritone. (It’s Christa Ludwig, still unsurpassed, on the Klemperer recording.) Yet here he is tackling all six, in a recording taken from concerts in the Vienna Musikverein last June.

Performances with a baritone rather than a mezzo or contralto as the second soloist appear to have become more common over the last decade, following the example set half a century ago by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Thomas Hampson and Christian Gerhaher, in particular, have showed how effective a second male voice can be. But though Kaufmann’s voice is regularly described as having baritonal qualities, he is not, at this stage in his career at any rate, a true baritone, and there are moments in all three of the contralto songs when he seems to be struggling to muster enough weight of tone to support the vocal line. Parts of the final Abschied are almost crooned, and the repeated closing “Ewig” is virtually toneless.

It’s a triumph of hubris over sound musical judgment, which does nothing for the tonal contrasts between the songs that Mahler carefully built into the work, and has a serious effect on Kaufmann’s performance of the three tenor numbers too. They are a gruelling test for any singer, let alone one who is allowing himself no respite during the other numbers, and even in the opening Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde, there’s none of the effortless power, the sense of the voice surfing over the surging orchestral textures, that the greatest interpreters achieve. It all becomes a bit of a struggle.

A real disappointment, then, which isn’t helped by the rather routine orchestral contributions of the Vienna Philharmonic under Jonathan Nott. At best, this is an interesting experiment that really shouldn’t have been enshrined on disc. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)

Jonas Kaufmann DOLCE VITA

With his whiskers well trimmed, Jonas Kaufmann really looks every inch the lion king of tenors as, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he stares out from the cover of his album of Neapolitan songs, Dolce Vita.

But other big beasts are circling around, itching for their chance to become lord of the tenorial jungle.

Kaufmann is proclaimed as the world’s finest tenor but, as this album shows, his grasp of Italian idioms isn’t as secure as Juan Diego Flórez’s was in his Neapolitan-song CD.

Nor does Kaufmann’s voice have the heady, Italianate beauty of Joseph Calleja’s.

And the Italian Vittorio Grigolo will surely think he’s even more of a matinee idol.

There’s much to enjoy here in this 18-item, 70-minute programme. Old favourites – Torna A Surriento, Mattinata and Volare – are mixed with enticing rarities, several of which I didn’t know.

But on this evidence, is Kaufmann a master of Neapolitan song? I don’t think so.

Take that modern classic, Lucio Dalla’s Caruso, written for Pavarotti. I remember years ago hearing it emerging from a jeweller’s shop in Italy.

I was so desperate to find out what it was, I went in and affected an interest in coral jewellery. If I had heard Kaufmann’s version, would I have bothered? Probably not.

Nor does Kaufmann’s singing hold a candle to Pavarotti in Torna A Surriento. Here Kaufmann sounds especially baritonal and un-Italianate; there’s little sun or honey in his tone. 

And he doesn’t sweep you away as Big Luci does. Kaufmann isn’t helped here by a relatively scrawny orchestra. 

At one level this album is fine but these songs do catch Kaufmann out a bit. All too often he seems to be looking in from the outside. (David Mellor)

Jonas Kaufmann THE BEST OF JONAS KAUFMANN

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann came on the scene in the mid-1990s and has gradually risen to the top rank of the operatic world. His is a remarkable voice in many ways. Like Plácido Domingo, to whom he is a sort of German opposite number, he excels in both Italian and German opera and also sings well in French and English (in an odd performance of a piece from Weber's Oberon, track 17). He adds freely dramatic shaping to lines of the big Verdi and Puccini tunes, almost always defamiliarizing them in ways that seem personal and passionate, with a bit of vocal gravel applied at just the right moment. Kaufmann has done his part to rediscover a languishing repertory, in his case verismo opera from around the turn of the century, and this Best of Jonas Kaufmann collection may be worth the price simply for the little-heard Ombra di nube of Licinio Refice (track 15). The collection represents a good mix of standards and innovative thinking. And, through it all, there's the kind of power that just doesn't come along often. It took a while for general listeners to wake up to the fact that Kaufmann is close to the best out there. This collection draws on recordings made between 2002 and 2010, with a variety of orchestras that are all completely overshadowed by Kaufmann's vocal artistry. It's a fine place to start with a singer well on his way to becoming a household name like the great voices of the past. (James Manheim)

Jonas Kaufmann THE AGE OF PUCCINI

The tenor Jonas Kaufmann has taken the unusual step of telling his Facebook followers not to buy an upcoming release on Decca Classics called Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini. 

The message reads:

Dear Friends, 

Please do not let yourselves be deceived by the Decca release 'Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini'. This compilation contains only three Puccini arias - my recordings of 'Che Gelida Manina' and 'E lucevan le stelle' from 2007 and a scene from La Rondine, that I recorded with Renée Fleming in 2008 for the album 'Verismo'. The remaining 18 tracks are essentially my old recording 'Verismo Arias' from 2010. THEREFORE familiar recordings - in new packaging. I was not consulted in its making, this has been done without my knowledge and approval. 

The 'real' Puccini album, which I recorded with Antonio Pappano in Rome in Autumn last year is titled 'Nessun dorma' and will be released on Sony in the middle of September. It exclusively contains arias and scenes from Puccini's operas Including highlights from Manon Lescaut, La bohème, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. 

Jonas Kaufmann