Jonas Kaufmann's Winterreise comes to the Royal Opera House

Jonas Kaufmann Winterreise - Royal Opera House, 6 April 2014

While opera squeezes itself into pubs, clubs and underground bunkers, could piano recitals take over its abandoned theatres? Jonas Kaufmann's sold out the Royal Opera House instantly. Some may have come for the Schubert; I suspect most were after the man.

The darkest song cycle in all of liederdom sits uneasily with the velvet and glitz of the ROH, even with the austere Act 3 set from La traviata drafted in as a backdrop.

But with a new album to promote and 3,000 eager fans who'd swoon if he tackled the telephone directory, it was the obvious choice. Having disappointed both opera buffs and lieder lovers last year when he pulled out of ROH and Wigmore dates, it could also be seen as a compromise offering.

Despite a punishing Reise of his own, which sees him in a different city (if not country) every other night, Kaufmann sounded in terrific health.  The sheer beauty of his timbre is unquestionable and his range of vocal colours remarkable.

With only a piano to compete against, we heard sounds too light to dare normally in an opera house - plus the odd unidiomatic sob that we already have. You might call Kaufmann's approach 'operatic' - in the melodic not the melodramatic sense, meaning rooted in musical line rather than text. None of the declamatory tones considered permissible in Lieder passed Kaufmann's lips. There were simply no ugly sounds.

There was no place for the oversized gesture either. This was a cool and self-contained performance, an armchair journey free of the burgeoning desperation, anxiety and even insanity that many singers bring to the cycle.  Kaufmann's reflective, inward style treated the text as metaphor for a memory, not lived experience. While many singers might be tempted to scale up the story in a big theatre, Kaufmann took the opposite approach, drawing the audience in instead of reaching out to them.

If the final result had a monochrome tint, that was largely down to Helmut Deutsch's self-effacing and unvaried accompaniment. Whether this was an attempt to link the songs stylistically, or simply his way of dodging Kaufmann's spotlight it is hard to say. I was however impressed by his cunning page turning trick; by having two copies of the score, one turned over to the next page, he made sure he never missed a note.

The marathon was greeted by prolonged silence,  in marked contrast to the stentorian coughing and throat-clearing that had peppered every pause in the previous 80 minutes.  No encore, of course,

And the applause, with thanks to Kyoko ( and for the better photos above, too):

Comments

[Renata P.]

How insecure the husbands in the audience must have been, wondering what fantasies go through their wives heads as they are watching Kaufmann perform...

[Susannah]

Coughing and throat clearing had peppered more than just the pauses in the amphitheatre and was accompanied by plenty of programme rustling, heavy breathing and fidgetting as well.

[Natalie]

I found Helmut Deutsch's accompaniment on the recording a bit of a disappointment too. Monochrome is a good word for it.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

He should have done it at the Wigmore.
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Intermezzo replies - The date was originally pencilled in for the Wigmore. It was only changed after his various withdrawals last year; I don't know whether they caused the change.

[Desdemona]

That coughing! What is it with some people?!

[Stephen Ratcliffe]

From row S of the amphitheatre I felt it was all happening elsewhere. People would not have got away with that coughing or programme russling at the Wigmore Hall

[Miriam]

I agree that the Wigmore is far more suitable for this sort of repertoire than the ROH, but having the performance at the latter enabled far more people to hear it.

From where my friends and I were sitting in a balcony box (very cheap for something like this if there are enough of you) it seemed as if the audience was in general very well-behaved, with coughing restricted to the pauses.
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Intermezzo replies - But the pauses are part of the music in a song cycle! - as David the Wigmore Hall house manager has often made clear to the audience in his pre-concert pleas. Because there's no sound to cover any extraneous noise, the pauses are the very worst place to cough, or make any other sort of noise.

This is when the musicians are mentally composing themselves for the next song. A sudden unexpected sound is far more distracting than it would be during the 'flow' of a number. As for the audience - those who are actually listening at any rate - the pause is an essential time to digest what has just passed. If someone absolutely has to cough, then the best time is during a loud passage.

These people managed to contain themselves for half a minute at the end of the cycle, so why couldn't they manage a few seconds at a time during it?

[Susannah]

Sadly, coughing and other noises in the pauses are not uncommon at Wigmore Hall either.

[villagediva]

Lustfulness last night, whether from wives, husbands, or others less labelled, rather misses the point. This was a masterful and moving performance, and it was a privilege to be there. Kaufmann’s Winterreise is truly epic, but my goodness, he makes no compromises. As Intermezzo says, there was no concession to the dimensions of the auditorium, he was deliberately drawing us towards him, not exhibiting himself to us. So if anyone came just to see him and and were not familiar with the song-cycle they were probably bored to tears - hence the appalling noise in between each song, and a horrible screech of a seat or something in the upper right of the house during Der Leierman. And yes, idle page-turning in the stalls circle too. Most people at the Wigmore would have been familiar with the song-cycle, that’s the difference. Notwithstanding the venue, the Remarkable One was asking us to be as focussed and attentive as he was, and accompany him each breath of the way, which was exactly what a lot of people there were not ready to do. But I am glad I was not in the Amphi for this.

I think what I have come away with is a renewed sense of the clarity and precision of everything he does as an artist - of vision, intent and execution. Does anyone place consonants with such delicacy? - just listen to the exquisite ‘s’, ‘k’, ‘t’. And the vowels in between unerringly beautiful. The real point about JK’s physical attributes is that somehow throat, lips, tongue, facial muscles, scalp, breathing apparatus, bodily strength and balance, all work together to transmit his intelligence, warmth and musicality to serve the text and music. Or perhaps the text and music exist to exhibit his elegant alchemy - chi sa? It all becomes one, and is supported by the marvellous Helmut. I did not think his playing dull - it simply never intruded unnecessarily. Helmut’s playing is the rock against which JK pours out his crystal-clear artistry. (Yes, I KNOW this is purple prose, but I don’t know how else to say it!). Helmut, by the way, at the end of Fruehlingstraum plays the final A minor chord solid, not broken. It was something of a shock, so I checked my other recordings and the score I have - everywhere else the chord is broken. But Helmut’s firm chord rings out an ominous ‘never’. Brilliant.

JK did not inject any ‘personality’ on to his Wanderer - however, he does employ the sardonic; in Ruckblick, Die Krahe, and Im Dorfe. And sardonic he does well, as we know from his opera performances. I am intrigued to discover that my dictionary says that ‘sardonic’ is a ‘Homeric epithet’ - how appropriate!

His Wanderer becomes progressively disassociated from the world; rejected and rejecting, a kind of ecstatic alienation increases its hold over him, until finally he submits to the inexplicable lure of the Leierman. By now JK’s cheeks seemed visibly shrunken, and as his crescendo on dreh’n died away the edges of his body seemed to blur, and he stood absolutely still with his hands at his sides and palms facing outwards in open submission to whatever was next. If at that point he had simply vanished and left a crumpled pile of recital clothes in a heap on the stage I think I would not have been surprised. It was his shape-shifting trick again - transforming from the majestic defiance of Mut to a sort of wistful vulnerability.

The other Winterreise I particularly like is Christine Schaefer’s - recorded in 2003 but I think not released until 2006. She has a similar ethereal, delicate and other-worldly quality to the interpretation, which I prefer to Fassbender’s more emphatic version, and Alice Coote’s truly angry and demented one (though I like them both. ). Henk Neven’s is also very sensitive. I know there are so many I have not heard, or haven’t space for here. Christine Schaefer, by the way, also does a crescendo on the last word of the cycle - dreh’n.

Epic and beautiful as this performance was, finally I was left reminded about Schubert himself, and about the suffering of all humans who make the journey beyond shattered illusions - I am certain JK understands that, and anyone who was there last night should honour his artistry by recognising it too.

[Desdemona]

Intermezzo - exactly! I thought the performance gorgeously controlled but I'm afraid it was so spoilt for me by the audience noises.

[mariette]

Beautiful commentary. Thank you!

[Andres]

I did love it, and at some points, helped by the sparse slow piano of Deustch, it did become the chilling lullaby (to a deeper final sleep) that Winterreise ultimately is, but on more than one occasion the artifice in some of the words and intonations bothered a bit. Well, not bothered, but didn't feel as honest as the subject matter would make you feel, I think.

That's why a few people complained it was a bit unsentimental and unaffecting: this is probably the perfect soundtrack for an elegantly dressed and immaculately coiffed Pre-raphaelite Ophelia as she drowns. This is the Winterreise of someone that wallows in self-pity, that enjoys being all miserable and heartbroken. You know he'll live in the end.

So yes, I enjoyed it as I do a Neo-classical fresco where newly-weds, kidnappers and vengeful gods all look gorgeously the same, but if I wanted raw, despairing, man-on-the-verge emotions this wouldn't be it.

[Felicity Rosslyn]

Heartfelt thanks to villagediva. I am still recovering from last night's performance and very grateful to have this account of JK's astonishing shape-shifting at the end.
I do wonder, however, if he and Helmut Deutsch need to come to some shared agreement about the last three songs (they disagree cheerfully in the notes to the CD). For JK the encounter with the Leiermann is a delusion, while for HD he is the wanderer's true companion and the reason why the cycle isn't fundamentally depressing.

I agree with HD, and am the author of the note in last night's ROH programme ('Keeping Strange Company') in which I try to explain why the encounter might be life-enhancing rather than doom-laden. In terms of German poetry, the hurdy-gurdy man is a daring revision of the trope of the artistic outcast, like Goethe's blind harper. This figure is usually shrouded in scandalous fog, accidental incest and similarly Byronic crimes justifying his alienation. By contrast, the description of the hurdy-gurdy man is designed to tie him to the real world where beggars play mechanical instruments unstoppably and dogs growl at them. The leap of energy in the wanderer's voice speaks of new resolution to me, as the romantic mist clears and he accepts that he cannot dictate the terms of his existence. What he gives up in 'heroism' he gains in humanity.

In short, I don't think the cycle ends in a whimper, and I don't think Schubert would have implied suicide so obliquely. Though if he had, JK would have been the supreme interpreter!

[Tinkerbelle]

Thank you Villagediva for your thoughts and description of the concert. You don't mention Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber, whose Winterriese is stunning too.

I eschewed this particular performance because I knew it would be full of coughers and shufflers who would spoil it for me.

Apropos of audiences, on Saturday evening at the Barbican I was behind a young woman who sat preening her hair and reading her programme all through the Concertgebouw's Bruckner 9th, whilst I could hardly stay on my chair and remain breathing!! One wonders why some people go to concerts at all.

[SJT]

The Barbican Bruckners were extensively papered, and there were deals galore going on. There's also the corporate sponsors, who dole out their allocation like sweets to favourites, who then drag their reluctant other halves along, most of them, male or female, brain-dead and/or half-witted, and certainly not interested. They might just make it through a Grubby Gubbay "gala" requiring the attention span of a gnat; but Bruckner is another matter altogether.

Having said the which, it struck me forcibly how very quiet the audience was for all three concerts in the Concertgebouw's residency, assuredly much more attentive and better behaved than the average LSO turnout at the same venue. Nary a cough or a peep during any of the three, 20'+ adagios over all three nights. Which is why gunpoint wouldn't have got me to sit through a Winterreise at the ROH, ANY Winterreise, least of all one with the KKK (Kaufmann's Krazed Krew) in panting attendance.

[Johann Erinn]

Best Winterreise, and plainest, is Hans Hotter, 1955.

[Stringer Bell]

Villagediva, thank you for this beautiful, heartfelt commentary of the recital.

[Feldmarschallin]

According to his own Website, Kaufmann has seperated from his wife.
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Intermezzo replies - I am only publishing this comment to inform others that that it is (for the moment) the first and last I will be taking on this subject. If the singer himself invites speculation I will reconsider.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Heh! Talking of "pauses" - one of the songs in Die Schöne Müllerin is called Pause and it falls half way through the cycle. I was at a Peter Schreier performance in Austria, of all place, and half of the audience started clapping after the song before it because they thought it was the interval. Schreier was aghast. Thank God he wasn't being accompanied by Richter who would probably have walked out.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Well said, IM. We don't want appetites whetted! :)

[Miriam]

That is really funny!

[Sheila]

I don't know anything about these songs but I surely do know about coughing audiences and what I simply do not understand is how the (mostly) men do not HEAR themselves making such extremely loud, unmuffled noises.

I attended a Renee Fleming star performance one night while suffering from the end of a nasty bug, and wouldn't you know it, I only started to need to cough when she came on stage. But I fought it and put my hand over my mouth and that muffled my strangled breaths. I do not understand why these coughers don't at least TRY to cover their mouths.