Jonas Ledang Information Therapy (2020)

In a Christmas album that is a gift itself, Jonas Kaufmann the most acclaimed operatic tenor of the age echoes his own holiday memories and joys with It s Christmas!, celebrating the most festive time of the year with a unique selection of beloved songs and carols. This uniquely rich and diverse holiday album features 40 favorites that reflect the many facets of Christmas, from ancient Christian hymns to contemporary pop classics.

After the success of his stunning album ‘Otello’, revered tenor Jonas Kaufmann returns with the sensational new album ‘Selige Stunde’. ‘Selige Stunde’ is the first recital in a small series of recordings that Jonas has made during the Covid-19 crisis. This stunning album includes a varied and heart-felt selection of songs that cover the most prominent Lieder composers. All tracks are short and are often performed as encores. The theme of the lyrics centre around love, longing, peacefulness and farewell. Kaufmann is considered one of the greatest tenors of this generation. He has performed at the world’s most prestigious concert venues including the Royal Opera House in London and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Kaufmann has won numerous prestigious awards including Gramophone Awards and Echo Klassik Awards.

Franz Liszt's songs remain the least-often-heard segment of his output, even as serious historians of 19th century music, including Alfred Brendel, have praised them. They are a bit uneven, and they are, for a composer who made his living with the grand gesture, uncharacteristically quiet. Various singers have taken them up, however, and this major release by Jonas Kaufmann, with the invaluable Helmut Deutsch on the piano, marks a kind of milestone. The songs are striking for how little they resemble Schumann or anything else written anywhere near the same time (until perhaps Hugo Wolf), and Kaufmann absolutely gets their originality.

Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is once again this year the beautiful backdrop for a classical music concert in a class of its own. Every year, the famous summer night concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra takes place there. This year, the orchestra is conducted by Valery Gergiev, who has been working with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for many years. For the first time this year, the German world star Jonas Kaufmann will be the star guest at the Summer Night Concert. The programme is still secret, but as every year it will be a particularly beautiful mixture of classical hits and special works by Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Emmerich Kálmán, Maurice Jarre, Aram Khachaturian and Giacomo Puccini.

One hundred tapes. Recorded by Jean Vapeur on the now legendary Nagra IV S tape recorder. A box full of the original sound recordings for Step Across the Border, the film Werner Penzel and I travelled around the world to make in 1988-1989 with musician Fred Frith. Just before the collapse of Socialism and the digital take-over of the world. Twenty minutes on every tape. That is, thirty-three hours of sound material. In the end, only ninety minutes of it are in the film. The rest of the recordings have been slumbering away in an old crate, and trailed along on our every studio move, surviving icy winters and even a flood in our archive vault. Now and again I need to clean the tape debris off the Nagra with a brush. Little piles of magnetic dust. But the sounds are still there! Wear debris, a symbol of elapsed time.

Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is once again this year the beautiful backdrop for a classical music concert in a class of its own. Every year, the famous summer night concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra takes place there. This year, the orchestra is conducted by Valery Gergiev, who has been working with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for many years. For the first time this year, the German world star Jonas Kaufmann will be the star guest at the Summer Night Concert. The programme is still secret, but as every year it will be a particularly beautiful mixture of classical hits and special works by Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Emmerich Kálmán, Maurice Jarre, Aram Khachaturian and Giacomo Puccini.