Scholl visit a rare high

Andreas Scholl has been rehearsing in Sydney for Tuesday's Auckland concert. Photo / Supplied

What: Andreas Scholl with Musica Sacra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Tuesday at 8pm
On disc: O Solitude (Decca)

Even with handbills and posters to prove it, I pinch myself to believe that Andreas Scholl, one of the world's leading countertenors, will be singing in the Town Hall this Tuesday. But he will, thanks to Indra Hughes, who has coaxed Scholl out here to perform with the Musica Sacra choir and musicians of AK Barock.

I catch up with Scholl in Sydney, where he is rehearsing for a concert of Purcell and Handel that will, a few days later, have critics talking of breath control to make the eyes water and the singer's extrovert energy and mischievous humour.

He is looking forward to crossing the Tasman and feels New Zealand must be a little like Australia, because "culture is not so easily accessible".

"Over here the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra can play 30 concerts a year in the same venue and get full houses, which would be unbelievable in Germany," he says.

Scholl's countertenor potential was recognised back in his mid-teens and, of his teachers, he singles out Englishman James Bowman, "a wonderful singer who was also a fine human being".

Scholl is immensely tactful and considered in his comments, wondering now whether the countertenor voice, once only known through Alfred Deller recordings, can have a certain modish appeal.

"It is sometimes difficult for female contraltos, when some choral directors want the novelty of a countertenor voice," he says.

"Yet it's much better to have a fine woman's voice than a mediocre countertenor."

Mediocre is hardly a word associated with Scholl and his Auckland concert will present some of the very best of Handel and Bach.

The florid aria Vivi tiranno from Handel's opera Rodelinda on Tuesday's programme highlights the close relationship between composer and singer in the 18th century.

"Handel wrote specifically for singers like Senesino, fashioning his music to the strengths of that particular voice, and something of the original singer's personality remains," Scholl says.

"In fact, when I sing an aria like Vivi tiranno I can almost feel that Handel might have written it for me."

The major Handel offering on Tuesday is a generous portion of the oratorio Solomon, with Wellington soprano Pepe Becker as the Queen of Sheba.

Scholl warned that there was a certain political intent afoot in the original oratorio, with various pieces of the Old Testament cobbled together "to appeal to a section of the English people who felt they were the chosen people, the direct descendants of the tribe of Ephraim".

On Tuesday you will also hear Bach's Cantata 170, which Scholl recorded with Philippe Herreweghe back in 1997. Its demands on the singer are prodigious, it is more than mere music.

Bach wrote this setting to complement the sermon of the week, and "his audience would be aware of that," Scholl says.

"They would understand the spiritual purpose of the piece, which is often lost on today's audience, who simply hear it as musical notes."

These days countertenors are not always willing to stay in an 18th-century musical closet.

American David Daniels has covered Liza Minnelli and Frenchman Philippe Jaroussky has whirled deliriously through Saint-Saens' heady opium song.

Scholl was the first in 1995, as one of the Three Countertenors alongside Dominique Visse and Pascal Bertin.

After the success of the Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras triumvirate, here was a group designed for audiences hungry, in Scholl's words, for "the highest, loudest and fastest".

It also gave him the chance to be Carmen for just a few minutes, in a take on Bizet's Habanera that he remembers as "a difficult one because of its register".

Scholl's superb new Purcell CD, O Solitude, a tribute to "one of the countertenor's great composers", brings up the name of the late German countertenor Klaus Nomi, who died as the result of Aids in 1983.

"Nomi was such a reserved man in his interviews, but on stage, in costume, he created such a flamboyant personality for himself," he says.

His version of Purcell's shivery Cold Song was inspired by Nomi while Dido's famous When I am laid in earth allows him to take on another celebrated operatic heroine.

"But then," Scholl says, "it is not as if I am singing about my love for Aeneas. This is a more universal song of mourning."