Spritely tenor

Not so long ago, the counter-tenor voice was an odd little byway in classical music.

Having been dormant for centuries, it was revived by English singers such as Alfred Deller and became associated with Olde England and madrigals round the fireside, and those bleak songs by John Dowland recently popularised by Sting.

Many people were bothered by the gender-bending nature of this high male voice, which lies in the “falsetto'' range (using the same head tone that female singers use).

But, since Deller's day, the immense popularity of pop and soul voices such as Al Green's and Michael Jackson's has softened our resistance to the high male voice.

And, in the classical world, the voice has lost its English quaintness and gone global.

There are counter-tenors from all over the world who have become genuine stars, such as Michael Chance, Yoshikazu Mera and David Daniels.

But none of them can fill concert halls with such insouciant ease as the German counter-tenor Andreas Scholl.

Scholl is a phenomenon. He has appeared on the stage of the Met opera in New York, he has done backing vocals for a German metal band, he has recorded his own pop songs.

But now he is returning to his first love — the Italian Baroque.
I meet him in Lisbon, where he was on tour with the Italian early-music group Accademia Bizantina.

“I didn't know this group at all,'' Scholl admits, “but then a contact at Decca records said, ‘You really should hear this harpsichord player called Ottavio Dantone.'

"I didn't really want to because, you know, a harpsichord recital is not my idea of an exciting concert.''

Scholl laughs at this embarrassing admission. “But he really blew me away and I just knew this was someone I wanted to work with.''

For the past decade, Dantone has been the musical director of Accademia Bizantina — and soon he and Scholl hatched a project to record some of the wonderful solo cantatas of Handel with the group.

It is these pieces that form the heart of the tour, which comes to London soon.

Ode to Handel

Scholl is even taller than he seems in the photos, broad-shouldered, with a very firm handshake and a big laugh.

When I ask him what appeals to him about these cantatas, he makes a big gesture as if to say words fail him.

“These pieces have some of Handel's greatest music. They have fabulous melodies but they are also little dramas in miniature.''

It has to be admitted that, as dramas, Handel's cantatas are pretty odd.

They are a product of the craze in Baroque Italy for pastoral fantasies which tried to recapture the perfect Arcadian world of classical antiquity.

Here, brooks always babbled, vines ripened under a perfect blue sky and the sheep were so well-behaved that shepherdesses could spend all their time flirting with local swains — or, rather, not flirting, as they mostly seem to have been a hard-hearted bunch.

All in all, it is hard to imagine anything more culturally remote.

Picture a man, singing in an unusually high voice, telling a story in which at one minute he is imitating a flighty shepherdess and the next the pleading suitor, all in high-flown literary Italian, with only a handful of quiet-toned instruments to give a little musical colour.

And yet, when Scholl sang these cantatas in front of that packed Lisbon hall, we were all willing to suspend disbelief; there were even some moments that were genuinely moving. So what is his secret?

“You have to remember Baroque music is about speaking, even the instrumental music.

"Whether it's a violin or voice, the idea is to imitate the passions, and in those days there was a whole vocabulary of rhetorical devices which we have to try to learn.''

But is that not hopelessly artificial? “Of course, if you simply copy it. The gestures are simply a basis, which you have to fill out with real feeling.

"It's like the business of learning to sing from a real, live teacher. I have this phrase which sums up the process: imitation, contemplation, emancipation.

"You begin by imitating, you observe yourself doing the action — and then you can move on and become free.''

In one cantata, Scholl takes on as many as three roles. “I'm the story-teller, I'm the shepherd and I'm the nymph.

"But I don't have to behave in a feminine way for the nymph, that would be ridiculous.

"When the nymph arrives, you step to one side and you use a different set of vocal gestures.''

Superlative scale

Scholl acts it out in the hotel lobby — and the effect is uncanny. “You see? It's about using the minimum change to get the maximum effect.''

But what about Handel's gorgeous vocal lines? Surely these were meant to be embellished, to show off the soloist's virtuosity. Scholl doesn't agree.

“You have to remember that these cantatas weren't written for a big public stage, they were sung at parties put on by the cardinals and princes who were Handel's patrons.

"There was no need for the soloist to do a big crowd-pleasing number.''

Handel's arias nearly always repeat their opening strain but Scholl doesn't treat this as an excuse to let rip with ornamentation.

“When Handel repeats a melody, he doesn't mean, ‘Say this again in a more florid way'; he means, ‘Say it again with deeper meaning.'

"For me, meaning always guides musical decisions. For example, on the line ‘I have no hope', I anticipate the beat in a despairing way, but later, on the line ‘Because I am their prisoner', I am angrily on the beat.

"The first time I did this with the band, it threw them off, as they need to keep the beat exactly.''

Handel's world of nymphs and shepherds was only make-believe, but the passions in his music can seem surprisingly real.