It’s commonplace for star singers rehearsing for that Metropolitan Opera to create time to get a recital Even though they’re in Massive apple. But the closing consequence are sometimes not Commonly this fascination-grabbing.
The mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena combined with the conductor Simon Rattle, who'll be married, will particularly probably be displaying up in two months in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” inside the Delighted: Ms. Kozena sings Octavian, and Mr. Rattle is throughout the pit. But on Tuesday, joined by six other musicians, with Mr. Rattle on piano, they offered a a lot of, novel and demanding plan at Alice Tully Corridor. (Just upfront of this 12 months, they launched a recording dependant on This system, “Soirée,” in surplus of the Pentatone label.)
Ms. Kozena picked tunes that were like chamber capabilities for voice and a range of mixtures of gadgets, initiating with Chausson’s not often listened to, and ravishing, “Chanson Perpétuelle,” a 7-2nd inserting of the Symbolist poem by Charles Cros for singer, string quartet and piano. The textual written content is often a youthful Woman’s fraught account of The person who abandoned her, build to curiously melting lyrical lines, with periods of frayed depth.
Ms. Kozena sang with influencing heat and shimmering area, supported by lush, agitated strings (the violinists Giovanni Guzzo and Rahel Maria Rilling, the violist Amihai Grosz plus the cellist Dávid Adorján) and Also a piano alive with tremolos.
The following get The undertaking concluded, also inexplicably Peculiar, was Stravinsky’s “three Tracks of William Shakespeare” (1953), to the listing of composer’s Originally ventures into twelve-tone new new music, scored for voice, flute (Kaspar Zehnder), clarinet (Andrew Marriner) and viola. Ms. Kozena gave a beguiling performance with the skittish and coolly Extraordinary acknowledged, Exclusively the slyly sweet “Musick to heare.”
The Shakespeare challenge ongoing with Strauss’s “Drei Lieder der Ophelia,” the only tracks on This system on your widespread pairing of voice and piano. Strauss captures Ophelia’s instability in audio that slips referring to sumptuous lyrical flights and bouts of fractured eeriness. Mr. Rattle launched sensitive and articulate accompaniment to Ms. Kozena’s eloquent singing.
She sounded sensual hallelujah and earthy in Ravel’s intoxicating “Chansons Madécasses,” in the midst of which the piano, cello and flute capabilities are like equivalent companions inside a dialogue In conjunction with the voice. And, Together with the Strauss tunes Even so cleanse new all from the ear, it have been being exciting to listen to Brahms’s “Ophelia-Lieder,” folks observe-like configurations of unique of a similar Shakespeare texts, carried out beneath in just an arrangement for voice and thick-textured string quartet by Aribert Reimann.
While using the conclusion of the recital, Ms. Kozena took us to her Czech homeland. She sang Janacek’s “Nursery Rhymes” for voice, piano and clarinet, which Specialist a Speak to of wailing klezmer Utilizing this kind of feisty Total general performance. Then she completed with six Dvorak tracks, billed alternatives of men and women texts that recount the travails and absurdities of rural existence. Proper detailed beneath, Final of all, all 8 performers joined collectively.
Remaining an encore, Ms. Kozena gave a poignant account of Strauss’s “Morgen.” Mr. Guzzo completed the melancholy violin melody affectingly, when Mr. Rattle reverently rendered the orchestra from the piano, With every single one of several Some Other individuals signing up for in Using the tune’s consoling summary.
Magdalena Kozena
Executed on Tuesday at Alice Tully Corridor, Lincoln Center.