Customer Reviews

Strauss: Lieder ~ Kaufmann

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Just as I write, the Gramophone's 2007 award for best vocal recital went to this album of Strauss songs from rising tenor Jonas Kaufmann. I had given up, more or less, on new lieder singers who can match the old standbys. But in many ways this CD deserves the prize. Kaufmann (age 38, born in Munich, now established at the Zurich Opera) possesses an attractive, somewhat beefy tenor, and his approach to Strauss is as robust as that of Ben Heppner or James King, one of Kaufmann's teachers. The stereotype of Strauss is that his songs are soaring lyrical flights devoid of profound emotion or poetically deep texts. But sheer beauty counts for a lot.

Kaufmann's semi-operatic approach is quite winning (another hefty tenor, Peter Anders, famously sang these songs in operatic style sixty years ago in wartime and post-war Germany), and his ringing tone brings a heroic element to melodies usually taken by sopranos -- Strauss was married to a gifted lyric soprano, for whom much of his song output was written. Helmut Deutsch is a skillful accompanist, somehwat on the workmanlike side. Sadly, the sound of the piano is clangy and clattery, and the engineers give Kaufmann's voice a metallic edge at loud volume. One expects Kaufmann to receive better treatment now that he's an exclusive Decca artist.

All in all, for those who love lieder, this CD is a welcome find and a harbinger of more exciting work from this rising star in the future.

P.S. Sept. 2009 - Anyone who loves this CD should check out a live Schone Mullerin from Kaufmann in 2004. It's on YouTube in good sound, and the singer is in glorious voice, quite the best we've had form a tenor since Wunderlich so far as pure vocal sound goes.

I recently bought this cd because I love the "Lieder' and music of R.Strauss.This singer is amazing,I gave up on ever finding a tenor of this quality.Kaufmann find's a different voice for every song,his heroic tenor can sound soft,exuberant ect.There is no one this day's who come's even close to this.I am tired of tenor's like Bostridge who has at best a thread for a voice ,or Florez,who goes on my nerves after three Arias,so it is good to have Kaufman around,am looking forward to many more recording's.I preordered his cd "Romantic Aries'.
Hopefully the record companies will not ruin his voice with a lot of Wagner.The critic find's his voice reminiscent of Wunderlich,what nonesense,just because Wunderlich is one of his idols (the greatest German tenor).
He is a first J.Kaufmann,not a second Wunderlich.

Jonas Kaufmann may not be a household name yet, but if he keeps this up, he will be soon. This is an incredible album that every Strauss lover and many of the unconverted need to hear. Gorgeous singing, with extraordinarily sensitive accompaniment from Deutsch. They work here as truly collaborative partners. A match made in heaven, to borrow a cliché.

Listen to their "Morgen!" and you may never need to hear a soprano or the orchestrated version of that lied again!

First of all, don't let yourself be put of (if that could be possible, with such a gorgeous album as this) of tales that the piano sounds 'clangy and clattery', which it simply doesn't. Well, yes, the accoustics are reverberant and they do sometimes interfere with clearest audibility at fortissimi, causing maybe an 'edge' to the sound. But only a little, and certainly never annoyingly so - on the contrary. (And with good or superb audio equipment there should be no trouble at all at discerning the wealth of warmth and detail that the piano and the voice contain, which is just fine.)

About the voice of Jonas Kaufmann, that has to heard to be believed, of course ;) It is a strong and resonant instrument that is delicately handeled. Please excuse my maybe somewhat excentric view on this, but if one would be able to describe the 'bouquet' and 'taste' of Herr Kaufmann's voice, one could maybe describe it as clean and fresh, rounded off with lots of fresh fruit and a nice spicy nose. Or one could describe it as sounding like a trumpet: sometimes sliding from the softly muted to the ringingly resonant, and back, from one note to the other with nicely flowing legato. He sometimes - tastefully - uses slides from one note to another. Also, in some notes, his timbre reminds one of Jon Vickers. But only reminding sideways ... The voice of Jonas Kaufmann is of course as unique as Jon Vickers' ;)

All in all a wonderful album. Please do yourself a favour and buy it, for yourself, or maybe as a gift to someone with whom you want to share the riches of life contained in music and the singing voice, and especially that of Jonas Kaufmann. Highly recommended [alongside the recording of Andrew Kennedy on Hyperion (Richard Strauss: The Complete Songs, Vol. 3)]

Jonas Kaufmann, joined here by his very accomplished collaborator Helmut Deutsch at the piano, delivers a full recital of the songs of Richard Strauss: the result is breathlessly beautiful singing. For far too long the Strauss Lieder seemed to be the property of sopranos gifted with that big Straussian tone, voices that could soar above the largest orchestra or whisper to the last row of a concert hall. For many this may be the first time ever to hear these familiar songs sung by a tenor, and if anyone has fear that the magnificence of these songs will be somehow lost on the male voice, then listen to how Jonas Kaufmann inhabits them. Kaufmann owns, simply, a Straussian tenor voice, and now with examples of his Italian repertoire as well as his celebrated Wagner repertoire, it seems there is little he cannot accomplish.

Some of the more familiar of the twenty eight songs on this recital will bear comparison to the female equivalent. In 'Ruhe, meine Seele' Kaufmann has the ability to begin a phrase with a pianissimo tone and allow it to gradually bloom into full sound, miraculously well. His integration with the piano introduction in 'Morgen!' is of the same quality of tone as the keyboard until he makes this compelling song his own. In 'Cäcile' his integration of the text and the musical line is as fine as any interpreter, and the examples could go on and on. There is good reason why this recording won the Grammy in 2007 - it is simply one of the finest recitals by a tenor in this genre on record. And to know that his more recent recording of Schubert's 'Die Schöne Müllerin' reassures the listener that this recording was not a single event that is not able to be repeated! Jonas Kaufmann is one of the more exciting and intelligently musical singers of today. Grady Harp, December 10

In a world increasingly enamoured of gargly German baritones and weedy English tenors it is such a pleasure to those of us who value "real" voices to hear this music sung full-throatedly by a proper tenor who offers hefty tone with the ability to fine it down to an attractive mezza voce; thus there is a true distinction between Kaufmann's operatic top B's and his whispered pianissimi rather than just different degrees of microphone-caressing bleating in mixed falsetto.

Since this disc first won Lieder-lovers' attention, it then took the Gramophone 2007 award for the best vocal recital and Kaufmann has gone on to release several more wonderful recitals while establishing himself as a rising Wagnerian tenor who also sings Don Carlo, Don José and still do justice to Mozart. Of course some will accuse him of bellowing and never be reconciled to his beefy, grainy tone, very reminiscent of Jon Vickers'. (I cannot for the life of me understand why commentators persist in apparently hearing similarities between, and making comparisons with, Fritz Wunderlich; apart from the fact that they are both German tenors and great artists they have virtually nothing in common.)

The intensity and commitment he brings to these gorgeous songs is a shock to those who want to hear pallid little voices aping emotion instead of testosterone-pumped outpourings of passion. His diction is of course a joy and his willingness to shade the dynamics from one phrase to the next - and indeed within phrases - brings enormous variety and drama. The best illustration of this width of tonal range, ability to shade dynamics and broad palette of vocal colours is perhaps to be found in his mesmerising account of "Ruhe, meine Seele" - but you could drop in on any song and find those qualities displayed to advantage.

Drawbacks are the brittle recorded sound of the piano and even the rather polite accompaniments from Helmut Deutsch, who is the regular partner to the whole current generation of German Lieder singers and more restrained here than in "Die Schöne Müllerin" with Kaufmann - or perhaps that restraint is partly a function of the slightly recessed, clattery sound and Deutsch is intermittently decidedly more extrovert, such as at the climactic end of "Ich liebe dich". Either way, these minor cavils are not enough to make me withhold a star from these captivating readings; as I listen, one song after another vies to be my favourite the way they are performed here.

Jonas Kaufmann rightfully boosts as the most unassuming, most talented and handsomest tenor around these days. With the 2007 `Best Vocal' album award, this Strauss Lieder laid the foundation of Jonas Kaufmann's now much more publicised international career.
Kaufmann's Strauss lieder, as we are being told, was taught by Hans Hotter, the acclaimed Wagnerian bass-baritone of the post-WWII era at Bayreuth. Indeed, this album presents the singer's voice in what I would consider the best possible light: the range is highly effectively modulated to various shades and colours as required by the diverse pieces that one seldom hears nowadays. Considering that Hotter is a reknowned bass baritone, he has successfully guided Kaufmann to use his middle and low registers. This aspect, however, does not suppress the upper register that is bright and powerful.
So, with a full and well-developed middle-low register and an attractively hefty upper, Kaufmann is being hailed by some critics as the `best tenor' of the 21st century.
With such a wonderful instrument, the next question certainly is - whether Kaufmann will strive for the pinnacle of singing, or will he, as one critic in Amazon has put it so vividly, `sell his voice to the highest bidder', as even for `selling' alone, this tenor has plenty to sell.
Instead of `graduating' step by step to roles that best suits his voice, would Kaufmann be obliged to please the opera house managers by bouncing forward and backward in roles that suit him and those that had once suited his voice but should rightly be discarded is some thing that fans would wish to know.
I for one am uninteresting in his Italian Mozart (as demonstrated in his 2004 performance of La Clemenza di Tito), and very possibly, his La Traviata, a role that is out of character with his voice. But I totally marvel at his Don Florestan in Fidelio, and even his Huon in Oberon, sung very idiomatically in English, as well as most of his French operatic roles.
The Italian operatic roles that Kaufmann would likely succeed significantly appear to be Tosca, Il Trovatore, Othello, roles that were at one time excelled by Mario del Monaco.
La Traviata should swiftly be discarded, and Rigoletto not to be attempted.
Then, of course, there is the great load of German operatic roles awaiting this rising star.

Anyone who raves about this awful CD has no taste or knowledge of lieder. All Kaufmann does is belt out these songs with no sense of feeling or sensitivity whatsoever. The first track will show what I mean. Definitely "can belto." This CD wasn't released, it escaped.