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Lestyn Davies |
Early music’s late blossoming
PREVIEW: THE ART OF THE COUNTERTENOR
Wigmore Hall
IT'S got such simplicity, clarity and purity that its army of fans say countertenor singing is just sublime.
But detractors say male altos are just men forcing their voices to sing unnaturally as falsettos and they’d be better off leaving alto singings to mezzos.
Whatever the arguments for and against, countertenor singing has grown sufficiently in popularity for the Wigmore Hall to put on a series of concerts by some of today’s leading singers exploring The Art of the Countertenor.
Iestyn Davies is kicking off the season and making his Wigmore Hall recital debut with the Concerto Copenhagen on November 18.
Pieces will include works by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Gluck and Arne.
Other countertenors in later concerts will be Bejun Mehta (December 9) and David Daniels (February 21).
Resurgence of the countertenor after the war was led by the great Alfred Deller.
The mantle was later taken up by James Bowman and Michael Chance, among others.
Now it’s being taught in the top music colleges and conservatoires, and there’s no end of concerts and record albums spreading the word.
“Growth of singing by countertenors has tended to go hand-in-hand with the revival of interest in early music,” says Iestyn Davies.
“There’s a lot more interest in works by Bach, Handel and other 18th-century composers and in works by earlier composers as well.
“It’s not just the same old pieces either.
The repertoire is continually expanding with long-forgotten works being revived, and pieces by little-known composers are being performed.
“People want the early music to be as accurate as possible. So just as period instruments try to replicate the music as it sounded at the time, so countertenors are in demand to sing the music the way it was.
“In this country, countertenors have tended to come from our choirs and universities.
“In America, they are coming from the music conservatoires and not just countertenors either.
“Why stop at singing as a male alto when you can be a male soprano?
“In America, the conservatories are producing ‘sopranoists,’ men singing in a very high falsetto voices in the same range as a female soprano.”
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