It’s common for star singers rehearsing In the Metropolitan Opera that can help make time to your recital While they’re in The big apple. But the final result will not be Commonly this desirable.
The mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena Together with the conductor Simon Rattle, who're married, will probably be exhibiting in two months in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” for that Fulfilled: Ms. Kozena sings Octavian, and Mr. Rattle is when inside the pit. But on Tuesday, joined by six other musicians, with Mr. Rattle on piano, they presented a various, novel and demanding technique at Alice Tully Corridor. (Formerly this calendar 12 months, they unveiled a recording primarily based primarily on This system, “Soirée,” about the Pentatone label.)
Ms. Kozena selected audio that were like chamber will functionality for voice and several combos of devices, beginning with Chausson’s rarely listened to, and ravishing, “Chanson Perpétuelle,” a seven-second atmosphere within the Symbolist poem by Charles Cros for singer, string quartet and piano. The textual substance is unquestionably a youthful Girl’s fraught account of The individual who deserted her, founded to curiously melting lyrical strains, with moments of frayed depth.
Ms. Kozena sang with impacting warmth and shimmering audio, supported by lush, agitated strings (the violinists Giovanni Guzzo and Rahel Maria Rilling, the violist Amihai Grosz and likewise the cellist Dávid Adorján) In combination with a piano alive with tremolos.
Another do The job, also inexplicably Fantastic, was Stravinsky’s “A number of New music of William Shakespeare” (1953), certainly one of a number of composer’s to begin with ventures into twelve-tone music, scored for voice, flute (Kaspar Zehnder), clarinet (Andrew Marriner) and viola. Ms. Kozena gave a beguiling functionality of the skittish and coolly superb proven, In particular the slyly sweet “Musick to heare.”
The Shakespeare principle ongoing with Strauss’s “Drei Lieder der Ophelia,” the one particular tracks on This technique for that common pairing of voice and piano. Strauss captures Ophelia’s instability in new tunes that slips among sumptuous lyrical flights and bouts of fractured eeriness. Mr. Rattle produced accessible delicate and articulate accompaniment to Ms. Kozena’s eloquent singing.
She sounded sensual and earthy in Ravel’s intoxicating “Chansons Madécasses,” the location the piano, cello and flute features are like equivalent associates in just a dialogue In conjunction with the voice. And, With every on the list of Strauss tracks keep on to present-working day when while from the ear, it had been exciting to pay attention to Brahms’s “Ophelia-Lieder,” people tune-like configurations of a variety of of the equal Shakespeare texts, executed beneath inside of an arrangement for voice and thick-textured string quartet by Aribert Reimann.
For the summary of happy birthday the recital, Ms. Kozena took us to her Czech homeland. She sang Janacek’s “Nursery Rhymes” for voice, piano and clarinet, which knowledgeable a contact of wailing klezmer Within this feisty standard performance. Then she accomplished with six Dvorak tunes, billed decisions of people texts that recount the travails and absurdities of rural daily life time. In this post, finally, all 8 performers joined jointly.
As an encore, Ms. Kozena gave a poignant account of Strauss’s “Morgen.” Mr. Guzzo performed the melancholy violin melody affectingly, when Mr. Rattle reverently rendered the orchestra with reference to the piano, Using the Some Folks joining in for the tune’s consoling conclusion.
Magdalena Kozena
Executed on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Coronary heart.