Liszt - Freudvoll und leidvoll

Description

Jonas Kaufmann joins forces with his regular pianist, Helmut Deutsch, on his new album "Freudvoll und leidvoll" (meaning “Joyful and Sad”) to perform a program of songs by a largely neglected composer of lieder: Franz Liszt. In the wake of their album Selige Stunde, they took advantage of the lockdown period brought about by the coronavirus pandemic to make a new series of recordings. Their second song album is devoted to Franz Liszt, a composer for whom Helmut Deutsch feels a particular affinity. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Herbert von Karajan, Liszt was one of the great idols of his youth. Jonas Kaufmann has long shared the enthusiasm of his mentor and longtime musical partner. As Helmut Deutsch explains, "Thanks to these gems, Liszt deserves to occupy a leading place in the history of art song, and yet even today, that status is still denied him." With a group of six other songs, including « Vergiftet sind meine Lieder », « Der König von Thule » and « Ihr Glocken von Marling », the « Sonnets de Pétrarque » have been part of Jonas Kaufmann’s repertoire for many years, while « Loreley, O lieb, solang du lieben kannst » and « Es muss ein Wunderbares sein » are part of his regular encores. The process of studying lesser-known “gems” such as the eponymous « Freudvoll und leidvoll » by Goethe, of which two versions are heard here, was a period of intense discovery, during which Jonas Kaufmann learned to appreciate these songs more than ever. For many of these songs, including the Petrarch Sonnets, Liszt prepared his own piano transcriptions, some of which became extremely popular in their own right, offering such competition that the originals are almost forgotten. The song « O lieb, solang du lieben kannst », for example, became the world-famous « Liebestraum No. 3 ».