Who would have thought that in the last few years four countertenors, all so different, could have so seamlessly entered the fray as vocalists compared musically and technically within the front-line mainstream? In fact, so different are David Daniels, Yoshikazu Mera (who is pursuing a more commercial route in Japan), Andreas Scholl and Robin Blaze that we would do well to take each on his own terms; we should no more yearn for a single, freakishly brilliant example of the not-so-rare art of falsetto than we would for a sui generis Osmin. The principal pleasure of this programme is that Blaze is so refreshingly natural and is no more singing to ‘pip’ a perceived rival than to force his personality on the listener. In fact, Blaze’s musical instincts are ideal for this marvellous pre-Bach solo repertory which represents a supreme test for an alto singer of any description: the rhetorical language is often profoundly intense, the richly wrought string textures must be conversed with, since the instrumental writing is so suggestive in its close dialogue and, most critically, the voice must assume its primus inter pares with a glowing warmth of expression. In short, Blaze scores on all fronts.
Introduced to the Bach works in Reinhard Goebel’s pioneering ‘Music of the Bach Family before Johann Sebastian’ (Archiv, 2/87), I still need convincing that there exists a more involved and compelling reading of Johann Christoph Bach’s celebrated lament, Ach, dass ich Wassers. Blaze colours the dolorous text with much affection and the type of peerless control which David Cordier lacks in the older recording, though The Parley of Instruments provides a fairly pedestrian accompaniment compared to Musica Antiqua Koln. The Parley opts for its renaissance violin consort which in the brighter numbers lends an incandescent and grainy immediacy, especially in the first of the two mesmerizing Buxtehude cantatas, Jesu, meine Freud und Lust. Here and in the beguiling setting of the Lord’s Prayer by Christian Geist, Blaze unassumingly traverses the quick-shifting moods with consummate ease, sailing sweetly and effortlessly above the consort with long-breathed chorale phrases and then in Jubilate Domino, elevating the text with an infectious rhythmic energy. Without falling too fatally into my own trap, Blaze has many distinctive qualities in the current firmament, not least his superb intonation (no current practitioner comes close), his capacity for listening as a true chamber musician (though The Parley doesn’t listen enough to him) and a light, uncloying timbre, intelligently focused and exquisitely nuanced. Highly recommended.'