Liszt: Freudvoll und Leidvoll

Jonas Kaufmann joins forces with his regular pianist, Helmut Deutsch, on his new album „Freudvoll und leidvoll“(meaning Joyful and Sorrowful) to perform a programme of songs by a largely neglected lieder composer, Franz Liszt. In the wake of their album Selige Stunde, they used the lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, to make a further series of recordings. Their second album of songs is devoted to Franz Liszt, a composer for whom Helmut Deutsch feels a special 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 felt by his mentor and long-term musical partner. As Helmut Deutsch explains “Thanks to these jewels, Liszt deserves to occupy a leading place in the history of the art song, and yet even today he is denied this status.” Together with a group of six other songs including Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, Der König von Thule and Ihr Glocken von Marling, the Petrarch Sonnets have been a part of Jonas Kaufmann’s repertory for many years, while Loreley, O lieb, solang du lieben kannst and Es muss ein Wunderbares sein are among his regular encores. The process of studying lesser-known “jewels” such as Goethe’s eponymous Freudvoll und leidvoll, two versions of which are heard here, has been a period of intense discovery, during which time Jonas Kaufmann has learnt to value these songs more than ever. In the case of many of these songs, including the Petrarch Sonnets, Liszt prepared his own piano transcriptions, some of which have become hugely popular in their own right, providing such superior competition that their originals have been as good as forgotten. The song O lieb, solang du lieben kannst, for example, became the world-famous Liebestraum no. 3