Jonas Kaufmann

I've been wanting to hear Jonas Kaufmann for ages. His recordings of Schubert Lieder and Carmen, arias with Abbado, etc. had piqued my interest. Tonight he sang at the Berlin Philharmonie with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Staatsopernchor: Liszt's »Der 13. Psalm«
für Tenor, Chor und Orchester. I was way up in the nose-bleeds but even there I could hear 2 things. A magnificent voice, even more thrilling live than in recordings (just as I'd hoped). And a terrible piece! Wow, was Liszt hit/miss as a composer or what?

But back to the voice: it is rich. It penetrates. It carries. It has colors. All of this I had expected, and I was not disappointed. But the overriding impression I was left with was that Kaufmann's voice is an instrument and behind it is an intelligent musician. High praise for, like, a singer!

He got 5 curtain calls. It was clear the audience (a full house) had shown up especially to see him. I'll bet Kaufmann was glad to leave a Berlin stage without injury (this summer at the Waldbühne he was bitten by Anna Netrebko after an impassioned duet).

Janine Wildhage & Christophe Landon Rare Violins Exhibition

Janine Wildhage and Christophe Landon have a violin workshop in Berlin Mitte where they make violins and sell old Italian instruments. At last night's "Einweihungsfeier und Ausstellung," they threw a party to inaugurate their new exhibition of beautiful violins, old and new. Armenian virtuoso Mikhail Simonyan showed off his Landon Guarneri copy with a performance of "Armenian Prayer" and Ysaye No. 3. It had a gorgeous sound and a vast range of colors, which Simonyan brought out with a bow so spongy it could have been a bass bow. Having played another of Landon's Guarneri copies the day after he finished it back in New York, I could hear that Simonyan's years-long relationship with his had deepened and ripened its sound. His playing was confident and polished with lots of nice interpretive details and an unusual degree of bow control at the point.

After a few glasses of wine some of the people gathered started to pick violins up off the tables and play a few bars of Bach or Tchaikovsky. There were members of the Berlin Philharmonic there -- earlier in the day they had rehearsed with Nikolaj Znaider, who had, coincidentally, also visited Landon at the workshop that same day. Znaider is due to play Sibelius with the Berlin Philharmonic later this week (review to follow).