Description

Decca: Jonas Kaufmann — Tenor | Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven & Wagner | Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Claudio Abbado (Audio CD)

Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!

Product Details:

Product Type: Audio CD
Brand / Label: Decca / Universal Music
Artist: Jonas Kaufmann, tenor
Orchestra: Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Guest soloists: Margarete Joswig (mezzo-soprano), Michael Volle (bass-baritone)
Chorus: Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma
Composers: Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Wagner
Release Year: 2009
Genre: Classical / Opera
Style: German Romantic Opera Arias, Tenor Recital
Catalog Number: 478 1463
UPC / Barcode: 028947814634
Condition: New / Factory Sealed

Product Features

Format: CD (DDD)
Discs: 1
Total runtime: 69 minutes 07 seconds
Booklet: Sung texts enclosed — English, French, German
Manufactured in: EU
Packaging: Standard jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped

Overview

Tenor was Jonas Kaufmann's Decca debut recital, and it announced something unambiguous: here was a tenor who could move naturally from Mozart to Wagner without the voice sounding like it was being stretched in either direction. That range — from the lyric delicacy of Die Zauberflöte to the heroic weight of Parsifal's "Nur eine Waffe taugt" — is the disc's central statement, and Kaufmann makes it convincingly.

The programme is built around the German operatic tradition, and the Schubert inclusions are the disc's genuine surprise. The two arias from Fierrabras and Alfonso und Estrella are rarely performed and almost never recorded; Kaufmann treats them with the same seriousness he brings to the Beethoven and Wagner, and they hold their own. "Was quälst du mich, o Mißgeschick!" from Fierrabras is a discovery.

Beethoven's Fidelio contribution — Florestan's great dungeon aria "Gott! welch Dunkel hier!" — is the emotional centre of the disc. It requires a tenor who can project both the physical exhaustion of the imprisoned Florestan and the sudden luminous hope of the aria's second section, and Kaufmann does both.

The Wagner closes the programme: Lohengrin's narrative and farewell, Siegmund's spring song from Die Walküre, and Parsifal's two great monologues. Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra accompany throughout with the transparency and flexibility that distinguish their best work together.

A landmark debut recital and one of the finest tenor CDs released in the 2000s.

Interesting Facts

Jonas Kaufmann was born in 1969 in Munich and studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München; he spent several years in regional German opera houses before his international breakthrough in the mid-2000s.
Kaufmann is one of the very few tenors of his generation who has sung both the lyric Mozart repertoire and the full dramatic Wagner roles at the world's leading opera houses — a combination that was more common in the 19th century than in the modern era.
Claudio Abbado (1933–2014) was one of the most acclaimed conductors of the 20th century, former Music Director of La Scala, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic; his late collaboration with Kaufmann produced some of the finest recordings either artist made.
Schubert's opera Fierrabras (D. 796, 1823) was never performed during the composer's lifetime; it received its stage premiere only in 1897 and remains a rarity in the operatic repertoire despite containing music of considerable quality.
The cover image references Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (c. 1818), an icon of German Romantic painting — a deliberate choice that frames the programme's exploration of the German Romantic operatic tradition.
Kaufmann's voice is distinctive for its dark, baritonal colouring — unusual in a tenor — which gives his Wagner in particular an authority and weight that brighter-voiced tenors rarely achieve.