2009, Bring it On!!!
The year is but 10 days old and the gauntlet has been thrown. We are already thinking about our Awards for 2009. Some of them will be hotly contested.
Best German Singer of 2009, a very tight category...Herr Kaufmann and Herr Pape, the heat is on. You have to beat the trio Of Thomas Quasthoff, Julia Kleiter and Maximillian Schmitt...actually, Julia was by far the weakest of the three and she was well above average.
Best tenor newcomer to me of 2009: give me someone better than the frighteningly young Maximillian Schmitt and I will be in Tenor Nirvana...what can I say about him - the worst I can say he is no Fritz Wunderlich. Lose 5 10 kilos and oh boy, you are set for Hunkentenor Status...he upstaged the remarkable and faultless Thomas Quasthoff. I worked out from his biog he might be as young as 25 and almost certainly not 30.
Best performance of 2009. there is still 11 and 2/3 months to go, but can I just say to all the opera singers who read this blog...the bar has been set at a very high level: emulate or exceed this performance and you will get my fervent praise
(yes yes, I know that technically Thomas Quasthoff isn 't really an opera singer, but opera/oratorio is interchangeable, and special circumstances apply to him who would be a very great opera singer if opera didn't have unreasonable physical demands...but I'd still love to see him as Don Giovanni, I think he would be excellent)
It was just fabulous. Far too fabulous to harp on the minor flaws and imperfections. Obviously they were off to a running start performing one of the most glorious pieces of music ever written. I could comment that at times Thomas Quasthoff surprised me by being not as loud as I thought he might be. However, the sensitivity he brought to interpreting the role was superb - highlight being the recitative in part two which describes the lion, the tiger, the stag, the steed etc. Jimmy decided not to read the text and, instead, just listen to the German, and he claims he spotted an elephant; I think that must have been the lion or the whale.
And the orchestra! The Freiburg Baroque under Rene Jacobs were incomparable. So many nuances. Initially, with my expectations set so high, I was disappointed that they failed to meet my demands for contrast in the bit that goes "And God said Let there be Light and There was"..."Li-i-i-i-i-i-ght" where I want pianissimo to become cacophony. I also want the concert hall to be in darkness until this point and then for all the lights to flood on. Still, the invisible hairs on my arm did stand up at this point,which was otherwise a low point. The choir - RIAS - was excellent, helped no doubt by their placement which had sops and basses to my left and altos and tenors to my right. They came close to polyphony or a Wall of Sound that reverberated effectively round the Barbican.
It is wonderful seeing Thomas Quasthoff. He comes on stage, and I register that he looks like a freak. Then the music begins, and he sings, and he is just an amazing singer. I would be a bigger fan if his repertoire coincided more with my taste - he does a lot of Bach and a he does a lot of Lieder, both of which are filed more under 'respect' than 'love'. But he's got a partial residency at the Barbican between now and October, and I seriously urge anyone who can to hear him. He is never going to feature on Barihunks but he is a very great singer...if I can select one moment, he is the man who puts meaning into the phrase 'der leichte, flockige Schnee'.
I psent most of the evening with a smile of delight on my face and I really don't think I was alone. Needless to say, the audience was very very annoying in the intolerable anti-social stuff they did. Some people had the temerity to cough discretely during the loud bits. There was a couple in front of me when, every time Thomas went from spinto tenor to basso profundo - as he does - in one phrase, exchanged glances of approval. And then, in Part 3, when Adam (Thomas) and Eve (Julia) were declaring their love for each each other, there were couples who crept nearer to each other, were touching, some even had arms casually across their lover's back. Really quite an unruly audience!
Overall it was a stunningly memorable performance. Naturally there were flaws, but I really do not wish to dwell, because no live performance is perfect, and yet, every single factor worked so well and gelled so excellently that it turned out to be better than the sum of its not inconsiderable parts. I was so glad I was there.
Earlier today I had been exchanging emails with Alison who expressed a desire to arrive on the Atheist Bus as a suitable balance to the message. Guess what I spotted on my Northern Line train!
