philippe jaroussky with australian brandenburg orchestra, city recital hall 22/03/2013

ABO gave uniformly good baroque ensemble and musicmaking. love the valveless horns which must be a bitch to play. valveless trumpets as well. brandenburg's onstage formality is still pretty lax, with rolled up sleeves, wiping face on upper arm seen, and the ever present onstage applause for the soloist. however tonight it was pretty well deserved.

jaroussky sang a program of duelling handel and porpora arias, showcasing both the differences and similarities in style. porpora's alto giove was a slow highlight, reminding me in many ways of handel's scherza infida as well as the backbeat soft entry similar to ombra mai fu. after each break jaroussky would start an aria with a really great tone and fresh sound for the first two lines, then slightly slip back into his standard sound. timbre and stability of tone was pretty good, much clearer and less nasal than i had expected. when it comes to coloratura he nails all the runs, and not as mechanically as i've watched on youtube before. however in the fast runs it sounded best with eyes closed; he still has some physical tics and jerks making it look like a great effort to make it all happen. with my eyes closed it sounds effortless. hopefully he'll be able to get to a stage where he can make it all look and sound easy. also a good consistency of tone at the extremes of the range; not too nasal at the high end, and not too soft/feathery at the low. maybe it's a countertenor thing but the projection was not fantastic; i was sitting in the 5th row and expected a bit more penetration. i expect the acoustics would have been pretty good up in the balcony of city recital hall. perhaps the italian pronunciation could have been rounder and not as long especially on the e's.

shaun lee-chen also played locatelli's violin concerto - fast runs and arpeggios of a study/scale nature; impressively performed but the overall piece was not a memorable one. the first movement took him a little while to get into the baroque tuning but from then on intonation was fine. the incongruity between normal finger positions and the expected sound a semitone higher is difficult and uber confusing.

jaroussky had encores of verdi prati (after mi lusingha il dolce affeto in the program proper) and porpora's nell'attendere which had a trumpet-singer duet bringing the concert to a close on a high note.

8/10