Magdalena Hoffmann

Magdalena Hoffmann’s debut Deutsche Grammophon album, Nightscapes (“a delightful recital” – The Whole Note), earned the artist a 2022 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award for her performances of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And Gramophone wrote: “Hoffmann’s legerdemain still dazzles. … I find her balance of songful lyricism and inexorable forward motion especially impressive”. For her second DG recording, Fantasia, the harpist has travelled further back in time to focus on the music of the Baroque period. Here she showcases her instrument in a selection of fantasias and preludes originally written for keyboard or lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his contemporaries Handel and Weiss.

Night falls in diverse ways in Magdalena Hoffmann's debut album. Nightscapes sees the German harpist dive deep into the intimate, mysterious, magical world of night music, as well as exploring the theme of dance. Its track list spans everything from the austere beauty of Britten's Suite for Harp Op. 83 to the folk-like colors of Tournier's La danse du moujik. The recording comprises both original pieces for solo harp and compositions for piano, skillfully transcribed by Hoffmann herself.

Magdalena Hoffmann’s debut Deutsche Grammophon album, Nightscapes (“a delightful recital” – The Whole Note), earned the artist a 2022 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award for her performances of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And Gramophone wrote: “Hoffmann’s legerdemain still dazzles. … I find her balance of songful lyricism and inexorable forward motion especially impressive”. For her second DG recording, Fantasia, the harpist has travelled further back in time to focus on the music of the Baroque period. Here she showcases her instrument in a selection of fantasias and preludes originally written for keyboard or lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his contemporaries Handel and Weiss.

Magdalena Kožená is a remarkable singer. Her voice is a somewhat light mezzo with many colors, and she can shade it to a whisper or impress with a fortissimo high B-flat. Her range is absolutely even from top to bottom and she never switches gears; similarly she refuses to push the voice at either end. Her reading of Eboli's "Veil Song" from Verdi's Don Carlos is seductive and insinuating, with just the right Spanish flavor in the low-register roulades–but they're soft-focused. Perhaps she has no "chest" register, or is afraid to use it?

Having dazzled us with her coloratura ability in arias by Mozart, Gluck, and her fellow Czech, Myslivecek, this luscious young mezzo-soprano now offers us a generous program of French arias–15 of them, widely varied in tone, weight, dramatic intent, and style–and conquers and convinces in them all. Beginning again in coloratura territory, an aria from Auber's rare Le domino noir catches our attention with the heroine's opening words, "Je suis sauvée enfin!" ("I am safe at last!"), in which she paints the picture of our out-of-breath heroine immediately.