KEY POINTS:
Countertenors are all the rage these days. Australians Graham Pushee and David Hansen have brightened our concert stages, and just a few weeks ago a young New Zealand countertenor auditioned for the 2007 Lexus Song Quest.
Andreas Scholl, David Daniels and Brian Asawa are the international high-flyers, Daniels even having the cojones to croon Liza Minnelli ballads alongside Dowland lute songs.
Japanese Yoshikazu Mera, an exemplary Bach man, has produced a Christmas album that cheerily skips from Disney covers to Silent Night.
Frenchman Philippe Jaroussky represents the new generation, a name known to those who have been following Naive Records' series of Vivaldi opera recordings. His new disc, Vivaldi Virtuoso Cantatas, is a generous breath of Elysian bliss.
The cantata was one of the more exclusive creations of the Baroque period, delighting court sophisticates with stylised mini-dramas in arias and recitatives.
On Jaroussky's selection, disconsolate lovers seek sylvan solace and compare their helplessness to that of a boatman dependent on friendly breezes.
Jaroussky has a sweet, supple voice, supported by a formidable technique. The upper register is airy, liquid in its legato; when he dips below the stave, the sound has an alto tang to it. Brilliant passagework, familiar from the composer's string concertos, ripples with ease.
Jaroussky manoeuvres his way through the emotional twists of the recitatives so beautifully, especially the spiritual and meteorological torments of the lost wayfarer in Qual per ignoto calle.
In the first aria of this particular cantata, he is all artless lyricism, with lilting syncopations and a poignant turn to minor in which Vivaldi seems to be offering his own brand of 18th-century blues.
The four musicians of the Ensemble Artaserse complement Jaroussky with the darker shades of bassoon, cello, theorbo/lute and harpsichord/organ and one of the band comes close to rivalling Jaroussky.
Jeremie Papasergio's four-key bassoon drives the jaunty duet of the opening track and, by the third, imbues his solo with the melancholy nonchalance of a tenor saxman.
But Jaroussky remains the star turn, in one of the most exciting countertenor collections to come my way for years.
* Vivaldi, Virtuoso Cantatas (Virgin Classics 45721)
