Press Archive
2017-09-15, Meine Klassik on Facebook
Ab heute kann man in Philippe Jaroussky – Page officielles erstes Händel-Recital reinhören! Bei iTunes und Apple Music gibt es sogar schon einen kompletten Track: http://preorder.click/PJhaendel
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2017-09-11, Deutschlandfunk, by Kirsten Liese
Aufbruchsstimmung beim Enescu-Festival
Der russische Dirigent Vladimir Jurowski hat die künstlerische Leitung vom Enescu-Festival in Bukarest übernommen. Für ihn ist der 1955 verstorbene George Enescu ein absoluter Musiker – und er möchte seine Musik in die Welt tragen. […]
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2017-09, Magazin Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, “Tanz in den Herbst”, by Jutta von Campenhausen
“Deshalb ist Singen für mich so interessant – man lernt so viel über sich selbst. Man lernt sich kennen. Was man kann und was man nicht kann.” […]
*This is a fan translation. If you have any problems with this being online, just drop us a line and we’ll remove it immediately. Translation by Lankin*
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by Jutta von Campenhausen [translation by *L]
You’re moving many people very intensely with your singing. Can you actually see that during the concert?
Philippe Jaroussky: Yes, I perceive the people in the audience. By the way, that’s an acquired skill for a musician, especially for a singer. You have to really face the people, yet stay within your own center at the same time, and fill the distance to your counterpart. And you mustn’t be afraid of funny faces! Some people really make strange faces, seem critical or distanced, but it’s not as if that means “They don’t like me.” People just look strange at times when they are concentrated or, as you said, touched.
If someone coughs, you cast them a stern look. Is the audience helping or do you wish at times it would just vanish into thin air?
Generally speaking, the audience improves an interpretation. That’s why music is always better in concert than it is on CD. With every new program, I try to do two or three concerts at the least before I take it to the recording studio. Only then you know if something you do has the desired effect and you can interpret accordingly in the recording.
The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden is a huge hall. Isn’t it actually too large for your music?
Well I have been to Baden-Baden multiple times. The first time really was a bit eerie. The hall has great acoustics, but its dimensions are a challenge. You need to be in peak form. If I woke up with maybe 60 percent of my voice in the morning, I wouldn’t sing there that night. A large hall has certain advantages, but you have to be conscious of it while you perform.
How do you handle?
It helps to take two steps back, away from the edge of the apron. It makes the hall appear not quite as large, and that way, the sound reaches people seated at the front sides better. Half a meter makes a huge difference there. It also changes your perspective, and the atmosphere. In 2012, at the concert with baroque arias and duets – together with Marie-Nicole Lemieux – it was fantastic. We were singing everything by heart and were acting a lot, creating an intimacy on stage.
Your next program is going to entirely comprise Händel arias.
It doesn’t sound very original to begin with, because Händel is most countertenors’ favorite pick concerning their repertoire. However, I didn’t choose the famous arias, not from “Giulio Cesare,” “Rinaldo,” “Agrippina,” or “Alcina.” Instead, I picked some arias that are lesser known but that I like a lot. There is “Flavio,” “Siroe,” “Tolomeo,” and “Radamisto” – the latter is more famous, but I picked lesser known arias there as well. If a composer is a genius, their genius is showing everywhere. In the most famous Händel operas there are ten to fifteen arias that are all fantastic – “Giulio Cesare” alone has at least twelve popular arias. Other operas may have three or four instead of ten astonishing arias. To discover these is very worthwhile.
Handel composed 42 operas with hundreds of arias. How did you choose?
I focused on musical quality, not artistry. The arias I chose in the end all happen within the tessitura where I can do the most with my voice. I wanted to feel secure throughout the range so I can focus on musical quality entirely. That’s something new for me after the past years.
Don’t your repertoire picks always suit your voice?
Some programs have been demanding. I don’t like to feel overtaxed concerning my vocal means; I prefer to sing what feels comfortable for myself. I like to have the feeling that I’m well prepared and have given the best of myself – that’s what the audience deserves.
How do you prepare?
I need time to achieve the best I’m capable of. If you have to sing Fiordiligi in “Così fan tutte” for the first time, you won’t start practicing a week before the concert either. I like to take my time to diligently prepare the repertoire. What I appreciate about the Händel program: I’ve been working on it for long, then polished it in fourteen concerts; now I give it some rest. By the time I’ll pick it up again for Baden-Baden, I’m going to have a certain distance, and it is going to be pure joy in making music.
When you practise, what do you work on?
During the last ten years, I’ve been working hard to get the sound as harmonious and free as possible. Nowadays, I’m much more comfortable when I sing than five years ago. There are countertenors who have bigger voices. However, my voice suffices to fill a hall. I’ve become more relaxed in that respect – and the voice sounds better when you’re relaxed. If you want to shine in some phrases, you have to do them one-hundred, two-hundred times at the rehearsal room to be calm on stage. That’s hard. And that’s why singing is so interesting for me as well – you learn a lot about yourself. You get to know yourself. What you can do and what you cannot.
You learned the violin as well. Do you still play?
A little. I have a love-hate relationship to the violin. I am always going to remain a violinist; I’ve learned a lot on the violin. At the same time, however, the instrument gives me the feeling to have failed. I didn’t reach my goal; it has always been frustrating. They kept telling me: you are a good musician, but a bad technician.
Now you are planning to set up an academy for young musicians.
Yes! The Académie Jaroussky opens with the start of this season on the outskirts of Paris. I have been doing my job for 20 years now, and there are plenty of people who support me. The chances that I had, the possibilities people offered me, that’s what I want to return. I am convinced that now, at the height of my career, it is when I can do that best, pass it on to young talents. However, the Académie isn’t only a project that is going to run for a year. Maybe it even outlives me – it is the greatest project of my life.
How is the Académie going to work?
The Académie has two main focuses: We work with children from seven to twelve from backgrounds that don’t have any real contact with classical music. We’re covering everything: instrument, lessons and we offer our experience. The other branch is more traditional: There are master classes for young talents from 18 to 25. I am going to spend days listening to others, to feel their energy, their personalities.
What makes you excited about giving lessons?
Teaching is very interesting for me. It’s also very rewarding for me. In others, you perceive more clearly what is beneficial and what isn’t. On top of it, it’s exciting to accompany young singers. I have been giving master classes in the past. With one working phase, they are a nice experience for the student, but they are going to forget. About 80 percent of what you try to convey doesn’t stick. That’s why at the academy, we’ll have three appointments a year, and we’ll be spending a week with each other – and that’s great. It’s not only going to be about vocal technique, but also to find out what the students really want to do. Finding out what repertoire suits them best. It’s about supporting musicians at the beginning of their careers, just as I have been supported. It’s a great responsibility and a privilege.
What is your message for young talents?
Don’t try to do more than you are capable of! Don’t try to express more than you can. Don’t try to lend more significance to a phrase that maybe isn’t as dramatic at all. It’s not easy – it takes a lot of patience.
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2017-07-13, Deutschlandfunk, by Peter Mayer
Unter den „verruchten Dichtern“, wie Paul Verlaine eine kleine Schar von Zeitgenossen nannte, war er selbst der größte. Von Jugend an nahm er Körper und Geist mit hemmungsloser Gründlichkeit in Anspruch. Der grünen Hexe Absinth hörig, soff er sich immer wieder außer Kontrolle. […]
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2017-06-22, Neue Züricher Zeitung, by Christian Wildhagen
“Wie fortgeblasen sind dagegen alle Schatten, wenn sich beide im Duett in Liebeständeleien stürzen, etwa in das ohrwurmverdächtige «Damigella tutta bella» von Monteverdi oder in den von Cavalli so leidenschaftlich vertonten Zwiegesang zwischen Helena und Menelaus, der in die hingebungsvoll ausgekostete Zeile mündet: «l’anima ti consacro, il cor ti dono». In der Terzenseligkeit dieser Schlussphrase offenbaren die Stimmen von Bartoli und Jaroussky eine Harmonie im Timbre, innig bis fast zur Ununterscheidbarkeit, die man gerade bei diesen beiden so charaktervollen Sängern nicht für möglich gehalten hätte.”
*This is a fan translation. If you have any problems with this being online, just drop us a line and we’ll remove it immediately. Translation by Lankin*
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Cecilia Bartoli and Philippe Jaroussky in Zurich
Two world stars from out of the weather clock
[translator’s note: I don’t think weather clocks are prevalent around the world, so let me explain what a weather clock even is: It’s basically a visualization of a barometer, and dependent on whether the pressure is low or high, a mechanism brings a different figurine to the front, mounted mostly on a swiveling dish. They used to be pretty common in Southern Germany and Austria, but there are others around the world as well. Mostly, and obviously, the figures are different, one dressed for rain, and one for sunshine.
Here is a pretty standard South-German one, …: [x]
And this is one from Denmark: [x]
]
By Christian Wildhagen, 22 June 2017, 05:30 a.m.
Cecilia Bartoli and Philippe Jaroussky celebrate their artistic friendship in the church of St. Peter: an original evening of duets centered around Claudio Monteverdi, full of wit and subtle irony. And a feast for the ears.
[caption:] Spiritual and vocal harmony: Cecilia Bartoli and Philippe Jaroussky. (Picture: PD)
A match made in heaven: For a long time now, there is a close artistic relationship between Cecilia Bartoli, the celebrated mezzo soprano – Zürich based in the meantime – and Philippe Jaroussky, French countertenor of no less acclaim. Their joint domain is Baroque opera, and most of the time, one of the two world stars alone guarantees a venue will be filled to the last spot. Consequently, there was a rush on the tickets for the special concert of the “Neue Konzertreihe Zürich” that brought together Bartoli and Jaroussky for an original evening of duets in the church of St. Peter.
The haut goût of courtly banquets
Monteverdi’s 450th birthday provided the welcome framework. However, it wasn’t the grandmaster of opera who was to get center stage – like, for example, at the Lucerne Festival this summer, where he is going to receive comprehensive appraisal – but the creator of supremely original secular vocal music that still hasn’t secured its spot in today’s concert scene.
Why that is the case became apparent that night: Monteverdi’s “Scherzi musicali,” of which the first collection was published in 1607, the same year that “Orfeo” had its premiere, are an art of entertainment laced with the haut goût of courtly banquets – which is exactly what makes them so eloquent and lively for us today. However, it is always the entertaining, and the delicate that proves the most difficult when it comes to interpretation.
Both trained singers, Bartoli and Jaroussky know of course that they cannot recover the original crudeness and authenticity of this talking music. They make do, however, introducing a playful, subtly ironical element into their performance that ventures into the staged and operatic – right from the start, when after the Toccata from “Orfeo” – vibrantly played by the Ensemble Artaserse – the two appear, one after the other, to the left and right of the double portal of the choir screen like two figurines in a barometric weather clock from the middle ages.
At the start, it is undoubtedly Bartoli who is in charge of the sunshine. Her energy is rubbing off on the audience when she joins the wonderfully flexible and attentive musicians of the ensemble in prancing through Monteverdi’s “Quel sguardo sdegnosetto,” a pert declaration of war on Amor. Jaroussky, on the other hand, is in charge of the less sunny weather and moods. Once he is the scorned lover, like in the “Lamento d’Alessandro” from the opera “Eliogabalo” by Francesco Cavalli, Monteverdi’s successor in Venice, then he is the dreamy Xerxes, in Cavalli’s setting of the aria that would become famous in Händel’s version, the “Ombra mai fu.”
The ups and downs of love
However, all clouds are swept away when both dive into dallying love duets like the catchy “Damigella tutta bella” by Monteverdi, or the the duet between Helena and Menelaus, passionately composed by Cavalli, mounting in savouring the devoted line “l’anima ti consacro, il cor ti dono.” In the bliss of parallel thirds at the closing phrase, Bartoli’s and Jaroussky’s voices reveal a harmony in their timbres, so intimate they become almost indistinguishable, something that hardly would have been deemed possible with two voices so characteristic.
Too much of played consent and love, of course, would be boring, and so, before the intermission, Bartoli cancels the agreement in Agostino Steffani’s “Combatton quest’alma” – cheekily running off down the church’s aisle, leaving her dumbfounded partner behind. Until the final reconciliation with Monteverdi’s “Zefiro torna,” and the final duet from “L’incoronazione di Poppea,” love has to suffer its share of ups and downs – much to the joy of the audience.
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2017-06-30, SWR2, by Jürgen Kesting
“Die Fülle, das Übermaß der Verzierungen mag für alle, die das Ornament als Sünde wider den Geist des Musikdramas ansehen, erstaunlich, sogar irritierend sein. Aber was den höheren Sinn des Ornaments angeht, so sei Riemens Musiklexikon von 1907 zitiert: „Im kolorierten Kunstgesang emanzipiert der gesteigerte Affekt die Melodie mehr oder weniger vom Wort und seinem Rhythmus und nimmt reine musikalische Ausdrucksformen an.“ Dies hat Philippe Jaroussky auf sublime Weise sinnenfällig gemacht – eine inspirierte Aufnahme.”
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2017-05-07, klassik-begeistert.de, by Leon Battran
“Philippe Jaroussky singt die Lieder in seiner Muttersprache wunderbar ätherisch und mit herausragender Textverständlichkeit. Sein Mezzosopran schwebt geisterhaft über dem Klanggrund des Orchesters. Seine Stimme lässt er erwachsen, erblühen und erstrahlen und überzeugt in allen Registern mit Wandelbarkeit und außergewöhnlicher Klangschönheit.” […] “Es ist die Wärme in der Stimme von Philippe Jaroussky, die berührt; die Aufmerksamkeit, die er jeder Note zuteil werden lässt. Er formt die Töne ganz ohne zu drängen oder zu pressen, mit behutsamer Leichtigkeit, als würde er Seifenblasen pusten. Und ebenso viele Farben spiegeln sich im Glanz dieser Stimme wider. Bravo, Monsieur! Cela, c’était superbe!”
*This is a fan translation. If you have any problems with this being online, drop us a line and we will remove it immediately.
Translation by Lankin*
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By Leon Battran
Even if, as a countertenor, Philippe Jaroussky appears to be predestined for it, it can’t always be repertoire for castrati. This evening, he is merely a mezzosoprano, interpreting Hector Berlioz’ “Les nuits d’été” – songs originating from the heart of the 19th century – and Philippe Jaroussky demonstrates beyond any doubt that he’s just as home in French Romantic music as he is in Baroque.
The Frenchman is “Artist in Residence” during the current season at the Elbphilharmonie. Already at the two inaugural concerts in January 2017, he had delighted with Italian vocal works from around 1600. The Berlioz songs originate between 1840 and 1856 and were originally designed for different voice types. Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights) is regarded as the first cycle of orchestral songs in music history, making Hector Berlioz the inventor of this genre. Spring awakening, young love and happiness are introduced just as well as pain of separation, despair, and death.
Philippe Jaroussky sings the songs in his native language, wonderfully ethereally and with outstandingly clear diction. Like a phantasm, his mezzosoprano wafts over the foundation of the orchestra. He lets his voice grow, blossom and shine, convincing through all registers with great versatility and exceptional beauty of sound. Jaroussky’s appearance is professional and extremely focused. Whenever some minute lapses in intonation want to sneak in, he immediately corrects them already at the onset.
In Berlioz’ songs, the singer navigates through idyll and melancholy: frolicing through spring meadows, gathering fragrant flowers of May, forlornly sailing the surging sea, and strolling through a moonlit cemetery. An equally dignified as well as fragile drama pervades the cycle, which the French countertenor renders particularly palpable.
The warmth in Philippe Jaroussky’s voice affects deeply, the attention he bestows on every single note. He forms his notes without any hint of coaxing or pressing, with gentle ease, as if he were blowing soap bubbles. And just as many colours are scintillating in the luster of this voice. Bravo, Monsieur! Cela, c’était superbe!
The audience is over the moon. There is applause after every piece. The enthusiastic audience even sticks to this pattern during the Instrumental Suite of Mendelssohn’s incidental music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The evening already started with Mendelssohn’s program music, to be specific, with his concert overture “The fair Melusina”; well proportioned musical poetry, crisply performed by the Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, providing a slim quarter of an hour of delicate enchantment.
Manacorda was at the baton. The Artistic Director of the Kammerakademie Potsdam stood in for Thomas Hengelbrock due to the latter’s illness. The Italian conducted the Midsummer Night’s Dream with reputable suppleness and verve, and somehow Italian. His conducting is very transparent, and positively pithy. Manacorda’s baton traces the music like with a paintbrush, sending a multitude of signals in various directions, swirls and atomises, tickling the musicians from afar or nudging them.
Particularly beautiful is the flowing intermezzo: the first part lyrical, elegant, beckoning; in the second part, changing to a rustic-style dance rhythm. The solo horn defrays the Notturno, in pastoral bliss. From then on, the music swells into greater drama, only to come to a rest on rocking sounds of the flute.
And then, at last, the famous trumpet fanfare, announcing: the wedding is about to begin! This wedding march comes along quite briskly, in a sporty-happy tempo, but at the same time festive enough to fit a New Year’s Eve concert. A single broad smile. There isn’t any better get-out dance. A last clang from the cymbals closes the what is probably the first summer night of the year in Hamburg.
Leon Battran, May 7, 2017, for
klassik-begeistert.de
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2017-05-06, Hamburger Abendblatt, by Joachim Mischke
“Mit einer Frauenstimme haben diese Nachtstücke immer etwas süffig Parfümiertes, das unverwechselbar klare Jaroussky-Timbre gab ihnen ein faszinierend uneindeutiges Flair. Manacorda bremste das Orchester aufs gerade noch Nötigste ab, modellierte mit Leichtigkeit hauchfeine Piani und breitete so unter Jarousskys Gesangslinien einen seidenweichen Klangteppich aus, in dem nichts einsank, nichts plump verloren ging. Dezenz ist Schwäche? Hier war sie Stärke. In jedem einzelnen Lied fand Jaroussky die eine Nuance, die es besonders aufrichtig machte. Hier ein zart schwebender Halteton, dort eine Nuance Innigkeit.”
*This is a fan translation. If you have any problems with this being online, just drop us a line and we’ll remove it immediately. Translation by Lankin*
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JOACHIM MISCHKE
HAMBURG
If Thomas Hengelbrock, principal conductor of the NDR, wouldn’t have had to cancel due to illness, he would have presented a concert at the Elbphilharmonie under the motto “Three Tonal Colours Of A Summer Night,” with equally fitting and appealing works by Purcell, Berlioz and Mendelssohn. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, … It was different in the end: Antonello Manacorda appeared on the stage of the large hall, the Mendelssohn part was being augmented with the “Melusina” overture. And Manacorda – otherwise artistic director of the small but exquisite Kammerakademie Potsdam, commended himself – very relaxed, very elegant – for further appointments at the Elbphilharmonie, where he debuted with his own orchestra merely a month ago. Clearly, he wasn’t just a fill-in to muddle through, but an interesting alternative, especially because the violinist/conductor Manacorda, just as the violinist/conductor Hengelbrock both share their background of the Ancient Music scene, with its different approach and concept of leadership.
At the same time, this endearing concert program was Philippe Jaroussky’s hard goodbye, whose time as artist in residence of the NDR in the first concert season of the Elbphilharmonie is ending this Sunday, as charming and convincing as it began. Berlioz’ soul-caressing song cycle with orchestra “Les nuits d’été” can be sung by different voice types; however, it wasn’t composed for a countertenor, a voice that, by default, is associated with pomp, affect, and baroque wigs, and less with salon-music-like sensitivity or the 19th century.
That was precisely the special appeal of the element that Jaroussky contributed, highlighted by his placement in the orchestra: he wasn’t flirting with his notes at the apron, neither above the brass at the end of the stage, but right in the middle, between the woodwinds section and the contrabasses – for reasons to do with the acoustics of the hall, but also for greater transparency concerning the score, to blend in as yet another timbre, one who also had to sing the poems.
Whereas with a female voice, these night-pieces usually come along somewhat light and sweet and perfumed; the unmistakable clarity of Jaroussky’s timbre gifted them with a fascinating ambiguous flair. Mancorda toned down the orchestra to the bare necessary, modelling with ease the most delicate piani, draping a tapestry of sound soft as silk around Jaroussky’s vocal lines, where nothing was submerged, nothing clumsily lost. Discreetness means weakness? Here it was a strength. In every single piece, Jaroussky managed to find the one nuance that rendered it the most sincere. A tenderly wafting portamento, or an intimate nuance. Especially during “Absence,” there was more guessing the airy and light music than actually hearing it.
In some respects, Mendelssohn is a lot like Mozart: it all seems perfectly easy, it all sounds quite harmless, but only before one is actually undergoing the attempt to play it playfully and easily. That Manacorda, an expert on Mendelssohn, chose the overture from “The Fair Melusina” as a preparation for the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” was only consistent. Both pieces call for an empathetic narrator rather than an authoritarian guide. The low and gentle, lustrous ripples, swirling around the theme of the hapless mermaid, Manacorda sets in scene in the style of a chamber music prelude.
It was easy to spot the subtle hint of what the sujet was going to evolve into about two decades later, in Wagner’s monumental, surging prelude to “The Rhinegold” (how fitting: Hengelbocks next project at the Elbphilharmonie, in three weeks, is going to be a concertante “Rhinegold.” With the same high standard, after the cheered Berlioz, the program continued with the music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Here both the conductor and the tutti displayed their security and attention to detail, clearly enjoying themselves. With a light touch, they sketched a collection of lovely atmospheric pictures, and Mancorda’s encouraging calm, in passing, seemed to free the solo horn player Claudia Strenkert from her slight nervosity at the beginning of her solo at the Notturno. It’s impossible to imagine a happier ending than the famous Wedding March for a concert that, without any ifs or buts, marks a success on the NDR’s timeline of the first months at the Elbphilharmonie.
(Image caption:) Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky at the curtain call at the large hall of the Elbphilharmonie
Image credit: Claudia Höhne
The article isn’t available online; here is the link to the newspaper’s culture department: [x]
2017-05-03, Philippe Jaroussky on Facebook
“Ein paar Monate nach der Eröffnung , bin ich zurück zu Elbphilharmonie Hamburg! Ich bin sehr glücklich!”
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2017-04-25, Hamburger Abendblatt, by Verena Fischer-Zernin
“Das Ergebnis ist, so verschieden die drei Komponisten ihre Schwerpunkte gesetzt haben mögen, insgesamt erstaunlich konsistent. Dabei helfen Philippe Jaroussky die Sopranistin Emöke Baráth, der Coro della Radiotelevisione svizzera und das Ensemble I Barocchisti unter Diego Fasolis.”
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