ORFEO International – Reviews

Important Releases Briefly Introduced

July 2009

On his visits to England between 1791 and 1795, Joseph Haydn not only enjoyed growing popularity, but also developed a taste for arranging folk songs from the British Isles. To celebrate the Haydn bicentenary this year, ORFEO presents a selection of Scottish songs performed by the soprano Julie Kaufmann, who has been much in demand for many years on concert platforms and opera stages internationally – as well as by the Munich Piano Trio, who have already recorded a selection of Scottish and Welsh songs for this label (with the tenor James Taylor).
C 642 091 AAs so often Haydn delights us with his originality in providing the traditional texts and melodies with unexpected harmonic and rhythmic twists and turns. With her fine lyric soprano and exemplary diction, Julie Kaufmann is expert at further heightening this pleasure: in a performance superbly calibrated with the Munich Piano Trio, she relishes the moments when the dance speeds up or slows down, doing so lustily and with an audible twinkle in her eyes, so to speak. The songs Fee him, father and Maggy Lauder with their slightly frivolous texts may serve as examples of this. A more serious and thoughtful note is struck in the first volume of the Original Canzonettas, six song-settings of poems by Anne Hunter. Here, thanks to her considerable stage experience, Julie Kaufmann is able to find just the right nuances of expression, both for the hopes and the disappointments of love. Two piano trios which can be regarded as paradigms of this form of composition complete the programme. While the Trio in C major Hob. XV:27 is impressive for its carefully balanced developments and transitions, the “Gipsy” Trio in G major Hob. XV:25 features a captivating final rondo “in the gipsies’ style” (from which it takes its name). The piece is songlike and melodic not only in the opening variation movement but also in the slow middle section, which precedes the whirligig finale – a piece that is tailor-made for the Munich Piano Trio on account of their often praised homogeneity, precision and agile phrasing.