They have been working together for 20 years, the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, the conductor, instrumentalist and baroque music expert in all matters Christina Pluhar and the ensemble L’Arpeggiata, which she founded. 20 years is an incredibly long time, but the way everyone involved is now celebrating this birthday in the Isarphilharmonie, it seems as if they got together yesterday and made music out of the freshness of the moment. It’s fabulous, thrilling and also extraordinarily well-founded in terms of musical ability and knowledge.
They present music that originated at the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, mostly at the French royal court. The opera was just emerging as a genre, and the emancipation of solo singing also manifested itself in songs, canzones, and lyrical treasures. In fact, Jaroussky usually has a little book in his hand, as if he were reciting poems about nature, about gods and nymphs, about the sea and going out and, of course, always about love.
Jaroussky is a charming, kindly troubadour, a flaneur in the realms of poetry, but he is also an entertainer, an arch-comedian, an actor who can turn a song into a small, plastic scene. But he has a stupendous mobility in the voice, can also triumph arios, but always remains so light as a feather and airy that the sound hovers over everything and also the quiet, which hovers very quietly into the last corner of the Isarphilharmonie.
Pluhar and her eight musicians deliver an almost exuberant wealth of ideas for this magic, which manifests itself most violently in Monteverdi’s madrigals and also in an excerpt from his “Poppea” opera. They really understand old music as a template for improvisation, right up to funny ideas like a James Bond quote. Sometimes you think Paolo Conte was a baroque musician, sometimes you swing softly in your seat, fidgeting. Always enchanted, always animated in spirit. Last encore, in German: “Take off your clothes!” Probably invented it myself. What fun.