Jonas Kaufmann non si limita a cantare, ma interpreta come un vero, grande artista. La voce è affascinante, nel pieno del suo splendore. Con un'orchestra simile e un direttore come Abbado possiamo parlare di capolavoro!
The wine beckons in golden goblets but drink not yet; first I'll sing you a song. The song of sorrow shall ring laughingly in your soul. When the sorrow comes, blasted lie the gardens of the soul, wither and perish joy and singing. Dark is life, dark is death! Master of this house, your cellar is full of golden wine! Here, this lute I call mine. The lute to strike and the glasses to drain, these things go well together. A full goblet of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth. Dark is life, dark is death! The heavens are ever blue and the Earth shall stand sure, and blossom in the spring. But you O man, what long life have you? Not a hundred years may you delight in all the rotten baubles of this earth. See down there! In the moonlight, on the graves squats a wild ghostly shape; an ape it is! Hear you his howl go out in the sweet fragrance of life. Now! Drink the wine! Now it is time comrades. Drain your golden goblets to the last. Dark is life, dark is death!
What a master, what an artist! Fabulous performance. Kaufmann's voice is at its pinnacle here, I think. Easy and so rich. Perfect dramaticism and technical detail. He seemed more natural then too in his behavior on stage. And Abbado i just love. So crisp, so clean, so expressive. Personally i believe he may have been the greatest conductor of the 20th century. There are certain things he did just incomparably. Poor man. How ill he looks here!
I agre...there'll never be another like Abbado, the most spiritually expressive conductor who showed it through a certain mystique. I still weep at his absence.
I love subtitles. Singing extends and sometimes dostorts vowels and deemphasizes consonants and I can suddenly lose comprehension no matter how good the acting is.
Struggle? That's the result of technical flaws in other tenors. Kaufmann has none at this point in his career and sings with unmatched feeling and beauty. Legato thy name is Kaufmann. As for Abbado's performance, that is another issue altogether since it is not a matter of technique but interpretation.
This is a perfect placement for his voice. Now, his voice is starting to darken and it's losing the "squillo" that was so beautiful. I do hope he turns back from the "dark" side (pun intended).
06:16 Cor anglais: really e flat - c - a flat? Not e - c - a flat? Never heard before. But I am a poor judge, because I am totally addicted to Fritz Wunderlich's renditions.
I have spent my life fighting against the saying "this singer is the best" as I feel all singers have their strengths and weaknesses, but all has changes for me over the last few years! When God sings he sounds like Jonas Kaufmann, Never have I heard all the facets in one place before - He is an incarnation of Bjorling, Corelli, Wunderlich, Gedda (to name a few). He can also trill and handle the coloratura fioritura of Mozart, Rossini & Verdi. I hope he survives as long as Gedda.
Joseph Giles Yes! There are other good ones too, but Kaufmann is superb in certain ways. All his technical embellishments are always so perfectly done, it shows immense mastery of his art, simply icing on the cake, but how pleasant to hear!
10 years ago he was good, just after his vocal breakdown and retraining with a baritone. But today his registers can't blend as easily and as a result he often swallows his tongue. This is the opposite of the tenors you mention who have always had impeccably healthy technique.
Have you seen him live? Because I beg to differ. And actually, if you read Corelli's interview with Hines in his book, he clearly states "the tongue goes down in the back." Now, a lot of singers say a lot of things, but they don't always do the things they say. So whether Franco was correct in his assessment of his own technique or not, to claim he, or any other singer, suffers from some imperfection within their instrument (specifically ailments having to do with specific muscle groups), is not productive. Without knowing the position of those muscles at rest (I'm assuming you have not been with Jonas when he's been sleeping, unless you're in fact the subject of an affair we the public do not know about), it is impossible to say whether he "swallows his tongue" when he sings without knowlege of it's resting position to compare. Analysis of his recent recordings are completely irrelevant unless you've heared (listened very closely to) him live over several occasions, you cannot draw valid conclusions regarding specifics and nuances of his vocal production, and even so, we cannot conclude that his tongue is too far down based on sound. What I think you mean rather is that his larynx is depressed beyond the natural response from inhalation, but it doesn't matter. What we can do is determine whether the fundamentals are the same as they were ten years ago, NOT whether his voice "sounds different." That is nature. He's ten years older, and his voice has no doubt adapted physically, as has his own subconscious and conscious efforts to control it. So if it sounds different, it most likely is not because of a technical change. There are many interviews of him speaking candidly about his technique, and his "approach to vocal production" has not changed since it was revamped in the late 90s, according to him at least. The other aspect of your argument, reflecting on his less than par sound as of late, again has to do with recorded versus live. Anecdotally, many speculate Giacomini sounded baritonal, but from those who heard him unamplified in the house said it was completely different. That there is no question of his voice belonging to the tenor canon. Even modern recording techniques have continued to struggle with larger, darker voices. Live, Kaufmann comes across much more lyrical than his recordings suggest. Apologies for ranting, but to say one singer swallows his tongue and therefore sounds worse than in the past is an inconclusive, unproductive, uninformed, sophomoric argument often made in the student halls of conservatories or from comprimario singers of far less ability who have no place diagnosing any technical ailment in public before their own.
Kaufmann has proven himself as an intelligent and musically sensitive singer. However, while I have a lifelong iron-clad principle, Never to argue with success - and Kaufmann is extremely successful - I have reservations about his vocal production. For the immense volume that he generates, Kaufmann's voice does not have ample "ring". The voice does not project outward. The resulting effect is a feeling that he restrains and reigns in, instead of releasing and allowing the voice to flow freely. This becomes more pronounced in soft passages where he seems to pull the voice inward instead of pushing it gently forward.
Beautiful performance, sound is not so good though - a technical recording matter. But enough can be heard. Kaufmann is managing the great difficulty in this work quite well: getting yourself heard over the orchestra which is quite a blow in the back. Strange that the composer is not mentioned. Either because everybody watching this is supposed to know the composer so well that mentioning is not necessary, not even out of a basic politeness, or out of a need to be complete, or because it is supposed to be irrelevant in relation to the performers: music is there for the performers and not the other way around. I hope the first, but fear the second is the case.
Beautiful! More longingly than desperate.... It's always hard to 'forget' the first recording/ performance you heard. All recordings following are compared to this one. Mine was Klemperer, with Wunderlich and Baker....unforgettable. But Haitink and Jessye Norman ...equally beautiful
Musically, artistically, linguistically stunning, and presented with elegance and passion. I hope that the voice teachers of the world will notice that his tongue is NOT flat.
His vocal resources seem almost limitless...But his relative failure to give specific color to specific words and phrases makes this performance unsatisfactory in a work where Mahler's extramusical expressive aims are so critical.
I miss Maestro Abbado, I’ll never forget his concerts with playing Mahler. On the other hand I’m very happy about being able to attend Kaufmann’s concerts quite often!
I'm going to spoil the party - much as I love his voice, I miss the sense of struggle that other tenors have with this piece. The orchestra too seems almost to poised, I miss the restless lurching from one phrase to the next. Was everything smoothed out in the studio? I am usually swept away by Abbado's Mahler.
Jonas Kaufman is in fantastic voice in this performance. His dramatic instrument is perfect for this incomparably strong piece. So beautiful. I'm not always in love with J.K's singing, but Mahler's masterpiece is in such excellent hands here. He's at one with the composer. Thank you--- so powerful.
Has Jonas Kaufmann ever experienced a first class Delirium Tremens? No? Well, just try it. And after such an overwhelming event Mahlers Jammerlied can never been sung in a polished manner. It's horribleness first class my friend!!!
maybe you can say to others, it is uninformed and not intelligent comment on him, he is continuing improving singing even over mid year career! Hard to find tenor,
