Jonas Kaufmann THE BEST OF JONAS KAUFMANN

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann came on the scene in the mid-1990s and has gradually risen to the top rank of the operatic world. His is a remarkable voice in many ways. Like Plácido Domingo, to whom he is a sort of German opposite number, he excels in both Italian and German opera and also sings well in French and English (in an odd performance of a piece from Weber's Oberon, track 17). He adds freely dramatic shaping to lines of the big Verdi and Puccini tunes, almost always defamiliarizing them in ways that seem personal and passionate, with a bit of vocal gravel applied at just the right moment. Kaufmann has done his part to rediscover a languishing repertory, in his case verismo opera from around the turn of the century, and this Best of Jonas Kaufmann collection may be worth the price simply for the little-heard Ombra di nube of Licinio Refice (track 15). The collection represents a good mix of standards and innovative thinking. And, through it all, there's the kind of power that just doesn't come along often. It took a while for general listeners to wake up to the fact that Kaufmann is close to the best out there. This collection draws on recordings made between 2002 and 2010, with a variety of orchestras that are all completely overshadowed by Kaufmann's vocal artistry. It's a fine place to start with a singer well on his way to becoming a household name like the great voices of the past. (James Manheim)

Elizabeth Farnum / Margaret Kampmeier KAIKHOSRU SHAPURJI SORABJI The Complete Songs for Soprano

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) may remain an outwardly formidable and eccentric figure, but his music, with its heady transformation of past exotic idioms into a bewildering alternation of excess and economy, is a marvel of inventiveness, appealing notably to those whose taste runs to music at once serious and exotic. 

Son of a Spanish-Sicilian mother and a Parsee father, Sorabji was celebrated for his polemical outbursts and opinions. Yet beneath the mask of his extravagance (‘Ravel, like Alexander Pope, is full of cocktail cretinisms’) he possessed a penetrating, witty, if frequently mischief-making, mind. Musical aphorisms (the final Arabesque on this delectable disc) alternate with works lasting several hours and his writing can be so intricate that it spreads its tendrils over as many as seven staves. Small wonder that it is only recently that Sorabji’s mysterious star has started to shine. 

Remarkably, Elizabeth Farnum and Margaret Kampmeier’s disc of the complete songs for soprano and piano is a world première recording and it would be hard to imagine a more persuasive case made for music too often dismissed as a specialist taste. The majority of the songs are in French – some are in English – and both artists declare their labour of love in every spine-tingling bar. The influence of Debussy is paramount in the earliest songs. ‘Crepuscule de soir mystique’ from Trois poèmes, for example, remembers the Etude ‘Pour les quatres’, while ‘Pantomime’ from the same set recalls the same composer’s magical setting of Verlaine’s Green. Chrysilla plunges from assurance to despair while L’heure exquise lovingly reworks ‘La lune blanche’ from Fauré’s La bonne chanson.
Poems that take a Swinburnian excess to extremes (‘the wild rose covers itself in the perfumed blood of its dye/And that the virgin, blushing with happiness,/Brings her crown and her heart to the arms of her beloved’), and the darkness of L’étang, are somehow magically cleansed of self-indulgence by both artists, such is their style and refinement. 

Elizabeth Farnum is a richly versatile singer who offers heartfelt thanks to all who made this very demanding and elusive project possible and it is no surprise to find that Margaret Kampmeier won the 1995 Naumberg Chamber Music Award. Both artists sing and play as one and they have been beautifully balanced and recorded. It would have been good to have the original French poems printed alongside Charles Hopkins’ more than helpful translations but any possible complaint in that department is balanced by an outstanding essay by Alistair Hinton, curator of The Sorabji Archive. (Bryce Morrison / Gramophone)

Jonas Kaufmann THE AGE OF PUCCINI

The tenor Jonas Kaufmann has taken the unusual step of telling his Facebook followers not to buy an upcoming release on Decca Classics called Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini. 

The message reads:

Dear Friends, 

Please do not let yourselves be deceived by the Decca release 'Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini'. This compilation contains only three Puccini arias - my recordings of 'Che Gelida Manina' and 'E lucevan le stelle' from 2007 and a scene from La Rondine, that I recorded with Renée Fleming in 2008 for the album 'Verismo'. The remaining 18 tracks are essentially my old recording 'Verismo Arias' from 2010. THEREFORE familiar recordings - in new packaging. I was not consulted in its making, this has been done without my knowledge and approval. 

The 'real' Puccini album, which I recorded with Antonio Pappano in Rome in Autumn last year is titled 'Nessun dorma' and will be released on Sony in the middle of September. It exclusively contains arias and scenes from Puccini's operas Including highlights from Manon Lescaut, La bohème, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. 

Jonas Kaufmann

Peter Eötvös / Etienne Siebens / Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra / Claron McFadden MICHEL VAN DER AA Here Trilogy

A branch snaps with icy confidence. It seems like an everyday occurrence, an everyday sound. But within the oeuvre of Michel van der Aa (1970), the snap of a branch means more than just that. In a musical context removed from the ‘everyday’, the gesture suddenly suggests loneliness, insanity, anger. And while the crisp noise a breaking branch makes is indeed pure nature, with closed eyes it also carries an electric charge. The gesture and the sound carry more layers and more weight than one might think. That breaking branch is a symbol for Michel van der Aa’s oeuvre in general and the Here trilogy in particular.
The interaction between natural and electric sounds and a visual-theatrical component are recurring themes in the Here trilogy, composed between 2001 and 2003. The cycle is thematically related to the chamber opera One (2002). In One an anonymous female character (soprano) undertakes an obsessive search for herself, and enters into a dialogue with her alter ego on film. In the second and third sections of the Here trilogy the soprano returns in the same vain quest for herself and for a connection with the world around her.
One and – in a more abstract, purely musical way – the Here trilogy both owe their confrontational dramatic effect to the theme of loneliness verging on insanity. The drama is not an imposed extramusical idea, but rather a product of the musical structure. It is not surprising that Michel van de Aa’s oeuvre is often referred to as the musical equivalent of the work of M.C. Escher. Escher’s perspectivist suggestions and spatial manipulation find a musical parallel in Van der Aa’s equally intriguing play of acoustic distortion.
‘I am fascinated by the contradiction between what is and what seems,’ says the composer. ‘The sculpture When I am Pregnant (1992) by the English sculptor Anish Kapoor appears, seen from the front, to be a solid wall. You only see the belly by looking at it sideways. In all its simplicity, this is an extremely dramatic effect. I strive to create a similar kind of drama in my music.’
In the Here trilogy as well, the dramatic content is an organic consequence of the poetics in Van der Aa’s music. Tension is aroused by the audible failure of the music itself, in which the musical present (live chamber orchestra or ensemble) clashes with the past (soundtrack). As a whole, that failure of the musical progress leads to the sensation of chilling, detachment and disunity that, after the purely instrumental first movement Here [enclosed], is given a voice in Here [in circles] and Here [to be found]. (Mischa Spel)

Sharon Kam / Gregor Bühl / London Symphony Orchestra AMERICAN CLASSICS

This is a unique collection of American works involving the clarinet‚ brilliantly performed‚ but sadly‚ it is a disc very hard to enjoy because of the unrelentingly aggressive quality of the recording. Most of this music is jazz­influenced‚ which may account for the balance of a recording‚ made in the Olympic Studios in London‚ which makes it feel as though you are shut up in a matchbox with very loud and persistent performers. Maybe that is the way some jazz­lovers want to hear their music‚ but these are works that‚ for all their brash qualities‚ demand the subtlety of light and shade‚ of dynamics less than fortissimo‚ and they hardly get that here. For all the virtuosity and feeling for idiom in Sharon Kam’s solo work‚ it sometimes feels as though one is actually inside the clarinet.
I remember feeling how unnecessarily dry and aggressive the recording was for Simon Rattle’s ‘Jazz Album’ – listed in selected comparisons above – which includes Bernstein’s Prelude‚ Fugue and Riffs in a superb performance with Michael Collins as soloist. But going back to that makes me realise how‚ close as the sound is‚ it has more air round it than this one‚ and reveals far greater subtlety of shading in Collins’s solo work than is revealed in Sharon Kam’s. As for Sabine Meyer’s performance on her ‘A Tribute to Benny Goodman’ album‚ it masterfully reveals the work as having far more qualities than surface brilliance.
When it comes to Copland’s Clarinet Concerto‚ the contrast between Meyer and Kam is even more marked. The wonderfully smoochy melody of the long opening section‚ which is so seductive with Meyer‚ is here made to sound sour and unpleasant‚ and for that I am not inclined to blame the soloist‚ but simply the recording. From their scrawny sound you would never recognise string­players from the LSO either. The second of the four movements of Morton Gould’s Derivations is a ‘slowly moving contrapuntal blues’‚ but it comes across as depressingly arid. Rhythmic control in the fast music here and throughout the disc cannot be faulted‚ but how wearing it all is.
The Gershwin songs are performed in free‚ jazz­elaborated arrangements by the conductor John Cameron and Gregor Bühl (Summertime)‚ and there you might argue that the close­up sound is more appropriate‚ but even in Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto – by far the least adventurous music on the disc‚ yet a skilful mix of classical and jazz procedures – one craves for more subtlety in the sound. And how odd that no hint is given in the booklet of Kam’s background or achievements. (Gramophone)

Sharon Kam / Gregor Bühl / Sinfonia Varsovia THE ROMANTIC CLARINET

The clarinet made its bow in the eighteenth century and was the immediate beneficiary of Mozart's attention, but the instrument came into its own in the nineteenth century. Inasmuch as major clarinet literature from the nineteenth century is concerned, works of Carl Maria von Weber dominate the field, but there was more to it than that, and clarinet virtuoso Sharon Kam helps widen the perspective in her Berlin Classics effort The Romantic Clarinet. She starts out with a concerto -- and what a concerto -- by Julius Rietz, a close contemporary of Felix Mendelssohn. It is a superb work; stormy, intense, and involving and probably is to the clarinet what the E minor violin concerto of Mendelssohn is to the violin. On Max Bruch's Concerto for clarinet, viola, and orchestra in E minor, Op. 88 (1911), Kam is joined her brother, violist Ori Kam. To be fair, the work is perhaps friendlier to the viola than it is to the clarinet; much of the time the clarinet holds down the fort while the viola goes gallivanting about. With the Weber Quintet in B flat, Op. 34, we are entering more familiar territory, but it is heard in the arrangement for clarinet and string orchestra, recorded with some frequency, but not nearly as often as the chamber version. In this piece, the Sinfonia Varsovia plays a stronger and more assertive role than in the others, which is definitely a plus for the music.

Sharon Kam's tone is even, controlled, and cool, though it is appropriately explosive in the few passages where such effects are called for; she effortlessly leaps around registers, and her passagework is clean and light as a feather. The Sinfonia Varsovia is led by Gregor Bühl who, overall, contributes a sensitive and well-balanced accompaniment that never overpowers the soloist and provides support where it is needed. Berlin Classics' recording is clear and attractively resonant, though there is some transience in the signal during loud passages where the clarinet register is bright and silvery. (Uncle Dave Lewis)

Sharon Kam PORTRAIT - Virtuose Klarinettenmusik

Sharon Kam is one of the world’s leading clarinet soloists and has been working with renowned orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Japan for over 20 years.

Mozart’s clarinet masterpieces have been an object of artistic focus for Ms. Kam since the beginning of her career. At the age of 16, she performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in her orchestral debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta. A short time later, she performed the Clarinet Quintet with the Guarneri String Quartet in Carnegie Hall, New York.

As part of Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations at the National Theatre in Prague, her interpretation of the Mozart concerto was televised live in 33 countries and is available on DVD. In the same year, she was able to realize her longtime dream of recording the Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet using the basset clarinet. Contributing to the widely praised disk were eminent string players Isabelle van Keulen, Ulrike-Anima Mathé, Volker Jacobsen and Gustav Rivinus, as well as the Haydn Philharmonie.

As a passionate chamber musician, Sharon Kam regularly works with artists such as Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Enrico Pace, Daniel Müller-Schott, Leif Ove Andsnes, Caroline Widmann and the Jerusalem Quartet. She is a frequent guest at festivals in Schleswig-Holstein, Heimbach, Rheingau, Risør, Cork, Verbier, and Delft, as well as the Schubertiade festival. She is also an active performer of contemporary music music and has premiered works by Krzysztof Penderecki (the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quartet), Herbert Willi (the Clarinet Concerto, at the Salzburg Festival), Iván Erőd and Peter Ruzicka (at Donaueschingen).

Sharon Kam feels at home in a variety of musical genres – from classical to modern music and jazz – a fact reflected in her diverse discography. She received the ECHO “Instrumentalist of the Year” award two times: in 1998, for her Weber recording with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig and Kurt Masur, and in 2006, for her CD with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra featuring works by Spohr, Weber, Rossini and Mendelssohn. Her “American Classics” disc with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by her husband Gregor Bühl, was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize.