Sometimes only Bach will do, and an illicit Youtube hunt when I should have been working led me to this spellbinding performance by the Hungarian mezzo-soprano Julia Hamari: 'Erbarme dich' from the St Matthew Passion, conducted by Karl Richter. I can't ascertain whether this was the debut performance that launched her career.
Her biography begins with the words: "Born 21 November 1942, Budapest, Hungary". That was not exactly an ideal time or place to enter this world. She would have been barely 16 months old when the Nazis invaded, and nearly 14 at the time of the 1956 Revolution. I'm not saying that to sing Bach like this you have to have spent your early childhood in a place as horrific as Budapest became while the Germans and Russians killed each other there in 1944, and naturally I know nothing of her life beyond her biography as linked; but one senses a depth to this performance - something trancelike, as the Youtube user comments - that is far indeed from the ordinary. I hope you love it as much as I do.
3 comments:
AMAZING VIDEO!
Thanks for this.
Check out also the performance of Otter (amazing too).
I do agree that there is something special at work here, Jessica. This is from Richter's 1971 filmed performance, five years after Hamari's debut in the same part. Via my computer and the Naxos Music Library (a name that may mislead some people, as it actually consists of some 25000 CDs on about 80 labels), I've listened to Rilling's complete Bach cantatas, 29 of which feature Hamari, and she is always especially fine in that composer. Also in the NML there is a 1976 Matthew Passion on Hungaroton, with the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra under Frigyes Sandor, and she shines there in a recording that is otherwise a bit of a mix, though by no means to be sniffed at. And also the Christmas Oratorio with Rilling and an Hungaroton St John Passion with the FLCO under Lehel. These may not be the best of performances overall, certainly none of them are my most favoured, but Hamari makes them well worth a listen.
Awesome intonation. What self-control!
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