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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A mystery unravelled ..., 7 April 2004
The maxim, 'if you want something doing, do it yourself' comes to mind here. Who better to explain the countertenor voice and phenomenon that three of the better practitioners in the 20th C - James Bowman, Michael Chance and the peerless Andreas Scholl ? All of this is helped by journalist and music writer Michael White placing developments in their historical context, along with pop observations by Jimmy Sommerville.In the world of Baroque music the countertenor voice is big business with two of them - Scholl and David Daniels signing high-profile contracts with Decca and Virgin respectively. The verisimilitude to what castrati 'might'have sounded like has captured a whole new audience for live performance of Handel and Vivaldi operas, not to mention a market for the burgeoning recording business in this area at the moment. And let us remember that men playing men's roles in baroque operas lends a dramatic believability to the action, even if they are singing in 'womens' voices. All three countertenors make a powerful argument for the falsetto (or head) voice to be regarded as a voice in its own right, for them to be regarded as singers, rather than freaks or somehow 'false'. They all acknowledge the debt felt to the grand old man of the voice - Alfred Deller - without whose contribution the voice may not have re-emerged after the depredations of the 19th C post-Revolution obsession with testosterone-laiden tenors and basses. As if this is not enough, there is about an hour of specially recorded material from Bach, Blow, Purcell and Handel with which to delight a purchaser. If you didn't know what all the fuss was about, then buy this cassette and find out for yourself ! Every serious music lover will be entranced.
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An interesting video - shame it's not available on DVD, 1 April 2007
After buying this video I had to go and find our old VHS video player and connect it back up to the TV in order to watch it. The world's moved on from VHS to DVD and I suspect many people, like me, have pretty much given up on VHS. Unfortunately this recording is only available on VHS and I can't imagine it will be released on DVD any time soon so, because I wanted to see it, I purchased the video.
This video is in two parts. The first part is a 55 minute episode of the South Bank show featuring countertenors with Michael Chance, Andreas Scholl and James Bowman as the main interviewees although we also hear from Jimmy Somerville (of Bronski Beat/Communards fame) and Telegraph journalist and music writer Michael White giving us some interesting vignettes into the place of countertenors and castrati in the history of this music. The second part includes 70 minutes of performances by the featured countertenors, mostly by Michael Chance but with four pieces by Andreas Scholl, one solo by James Bowman and two duets between James Bowman and Michael Chance.
The big big drawback with VHS is apparent almost immediately when starting watching this video - the picture and sound quality. Perhaps it's our video player being a bit old but the picture was fuzzy and the sound often distorted and not actually that pleasant to listen to - we have all got used to the quality of DVDs, I expect, and I had forgotten these disadvantages with VHS. However, for me I wasn't buying this to hear the songs, I mainly wanted to hear the interviews, so it wasn't too big a problem.
It seems that the Michael Chance and James Bowman performances were all shot in the same place (some posh-looking room in a country house) at the same time. Their interviews (presumably shot in their homes) are very interesting and they weave for us the history of how the recent countertenor revival came about (with some old footage of Alfred Deller singing). The interviews with Andreas Scholl (which for me are far more interesting as I am a fan) seemed to have been shot in different locations and at different times (he had various different styles of clothing and facial hair!) but were fascinating nonetheless - including an interview in a recording studio where he was using an Atari ST computer - that definitely dated this programme! Jimmy Somerville highlighted the countertenor role in pop (far more readily accepted than classical singers) and Andreas Scholl talked about pop music as well. The interviews are interspersed with clips of performances usually demonstrating something that the countertenor has been describing - Andreas Scholl looking rather like a waxwork in his performance, the others se | |
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