Karita Mattila recital
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris – June 7 2005 Songs by Puccini, Toivo Kuula, Mahler and Strauss. With Malcolm Martineau, Piano. Some people are incorrigible. The same friend who, having claimed Waltraut Meuer’s voice was in ruins, was forced to repent on hearing her as Isolde, this time claimed that to him, Karita Mattila’s phrasing sounded like “a trunk being dragged laboriously down stairs.” Of course, after the Meier affair, I didn’t give much credence to this, but it was still in the back of my mind at the start of Karita Mattila’s Paris recital and, as the first notes struck up, I admit I had a minute or two of apprehension. After numerous Jenufas and Salomes, the voice is now startlingly big, especially in recital, and as this sledgehammer came down on Puccini’s tender nuts, it sounded for a while as if it was too big, becoming unwieldy and hard to keep under control. But by the second song, things were more reassuring: the problem was more in the nature of the songs – and, though I’d...