Germany Musikfest Bremen 2024 [1] – Puccini: Jonathan Tetelman (tenor), Bremer Philharmoniker / Marko Latonja (conductor). Die Glocke, Bremen, 28.8.2024. (DMD)
Puccini – Preludio sinfonico: ‘Recondita armonia’ (Tosca); ‘Parigi è la città dei desideri’ (La rondine); Intermezzo (Suor Angelica); ‘Ch’ella mi creda’ (La fanciulla del West); Intermezzo (Le Villi); Preludio Act I (Edgar); ‘Amore o grillo’; ‘Addio, fiorito asil’; Intermezzo (Madama Butterfly); ‘Donna non vidi mai’; ‘Ah! Manon mit tradisce’; Intermezzo; (Manon Lescaut); ‘Nessun dorma’ (Turandot)
Encores:
Pablo Sorozábal – ‘Non puede ser’ (La tabernera del Puerto)
Di Capua – ‘O Sole Mio’
Puccini – ‘E lucevan le stelle’ (Tosca)
This concert was part of several celebrations: a highlight of the annual Musikfest Bremen (Bremen Music Festival), whilst the orchestra, the Bremen Philharmonic, celebrates its 200th anniversary season, and the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s death. Also, young Chilean-American tenor Jonathan Tetelman celebrates an important stage in his impressive career. In the sold-out Bremen concert hall Die Glocke, seating around 1400, many in the audience were dressed up for the occasion, clearly enjoying the celebration, and conversations could be overheard mentioning the forthcoming Puccini celebration with Jonas Kaufmann in the same venue in November.
Marko Letonja led the orchestra through the evening with great ease and considerable competence. With the orchestra he displayed a deeply felt sense of the wave-like rising and falling tides characteristic of Puccini’s music, with particular emphasis on the shifts of pitch, the crescendos and decrescendos.
Compared with the orchestral pieces, for the accompaniment of the soloist the orchestra did not have to hold back. Orchestra and Tetelman merged into a unified sound. In the world of tenors, Tetelman’s voice is clearly in the upper echelons. Even in recital format, Tetelman inhabits the characters he represents on stage, entering their nature in the few moments between the applause dying down and the conductor raising his baton for the music to begin. Such characterisation frames the singing, the level of drama, the intensity and nature of the emotions carried through the voice. Teleman is able to mould his voice very responsively in pitch, equally at ease in fortissimo and piano passages. When his voice rises to exposed high notes, this is executed with care and awareness of the climax to be reached, without the tightening the muscles of the throat that can impede the sound for less experienced or capable tenors. Tetelman’s sound moves freely, he clearly enjoys both the build-up towards and the execution of the high notes. They come out like clarion calls, secure, burnished, ringing, often spinetingling.
Tetelman’s voice is developing the quality of being immediately identifiable, when heard on the radio for instance. There were rare moments when the voice sounded less than perfect, forced. Those moments came with odd body postures or movements, with his chest pressed forward, shoulders forced to open and stretch to the back, and head tilted towards the back, eyes towards the ceiling, perhaps to open up the area of the voice box. But those few moments, although noticeable, did not distract from Tetelman’s highly impressive display of vocal talent and musicality.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe