“The soprano Diana Damrau likes a good challenge. Over the past decade at the Metropolitan Opera, she has sung her first performances of difficult roles, played both Pamina and the Queen of the Night during a single run of “The Magic Flute” and turned cartwheels onstage in Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.”
The song recital Ms. Damrau presented on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, with the pianist Craig Rutenberg, appeared to be born of a different dare: How much personality, how much dramatic fire, can you fit into the narrow dynamic range between pianissimo and mezzo piano — between really quiet and pretty quiet — and still project to the last row of the 2,800-seat Stern Auditorium? A great deal, as it turns out.
The first half of the program consisted of songs by Schubert and Strauss that deal mostly with secret love. With meticulous coloring of her buoyant, silky soprano, Ms. Damrau brought out a wealth of different emotional states. In the Schubert selections, there were the hopeful mysticism of “Ständchen,” in which a lover confides his longing to nature; the first dizzying butterflies experienced in “Gretchen am Spinnrade”; the fit-to-burst passion of “Heimliches Lieben”; and the coy glee, in “Geheimes,” that comes from having information everyone else is guessing at.
The Strauss songs, too, spoke of love jealously guarded from the outside world. Vocally, all of this contained passion requires prodigious breath control from a singer. Often, Ms. Damrau allowed her sound to taper off, even as the musical line rose, and in the way she reined in certain climactic notes, she was able conjure feelings from fear to head-in-the-clouds dreaminess and aching sensuality.
The concert’s second half opened with songs by Poulenc, “Fiançailles Pour Rire,” that expressed more guarded and ambivalent emotions. Ms. Damrau, supported by the sophisticated playing of Mr. Rutenberg, appeared just as comfortable in almost-static sound paintings like “Dans l’Herbe,” in which she shaped wispy, vaporous phrases over softly billowing piano chords.
Still, Ms. Damrau’s vivacious temperament and disarmingly goofy sense of humor would only brook so much containment. In selections from Manuel Rosenthal’s “Chansons du Monsieur Bleu,” a group of irreverent children’s observations, her comic instincts came to the fore. Dvorak’s spirited “Gypsy Songs,” sung with their original German texts, rounded out the program by calling forth much brighter shadings from Ms. Damrau . . .”
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim – The New York Times
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– Diana Damrau dared to give an intimate recital on Sunday at Carnegie Hall, capacity 2,804 . . . All it takes is focus, projection, conviction, intelligence, control and, oh yes, superior vocal resources.
Rejecting diva poses and melodramatic manners, Damrau offered an afternoon of uninhibited aesthetic revelations. Some stars use the concert platform to demonstrate familiar skills, or, perhaps, to extend operatic horizons. Not this star.
The German native, 44, chose a sophisticated programme that fused familiar challenges with beguiling obscurities. She performed throughout, moreover, with stylish flair bolstered by expressive insight. Craig Rutenberg reinforced every subtle impulse at the piano.
That meant enlightened traversals of romantic Lieder by Schubert and Richard Strauss, piquant mélodies of Poulenc and Manuel Rosenthal plus folkish explorations of Dvořák. Damrau managed to emote without bathos, charm without cloying and amuse without clowning. She could be truly tragic one moment, wickedly silly the next. In each case she conveyed ardour with effortless passion, and, at all times, offered memorable exemplars of dynamic sensitivity.
Whether singing in German or French, she made the words count as much as the song. She refused to court prettiness for its own sake. Yet, at the other extreme, she refused to allow theatricality to devalue musicality.”
Martin Bernheimer – FT.com
