Ambronay and its festival are very much home to Philippe Jaroussky. He has been a regular here since 1999 and the festival staff remember him as the callow youth with the angelic voice. Last night, he joined Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata, with whom he has collaborated since the global success of their 2009 Monteverdi album Teatro d’Amore. Their comfort together was palpable.
The programme included most of the numbers from their most recent album Passacalle de la Follie, music drawn from the court of Louis XIII of France with its mixture of upbeat dances, pastoral laments and exotic imports from Italy and Spain. To each, L’Arpeggiata brought their joyful, exuberant approach, playing with freedom and improvisation.
Jaroussky’s voice may no longer be quite as angelic, but the timbre remains ultra smooth and he remains the complete countertenor package. He has pinpoint control over dynamics and vibrato which he uses to shape lines deliciously. He can project his voice at will to distant parts of Ambronay’s great Abbatial church. And he radiates earnestness; every line of text is there for a purpose, supported by gesture, his arms outstretched in yearning for the laments, his feet in constant motion for the dances.
Jaroussky can be a shameless showman, especially when spurred on by the other musicians. When we got to the Spanish pastiches – Gabriel Bataille’s El baxel està en la playa and Henry de Bailly’s Yo sol la locura, set alight by the incredibly loose-wristed rasgueados of guitarist Josep Maria Marti Duran and the castanets of David Mayoral – he brought the house down with an impromptu set of flamenco moves.
What makes L’Arpeggiata so remarkable is the way they absorb techniques from jazz into meticulously researched Early Music in a way that feels totally natural. These players are all virtuosi, but they give each other space in a way other classical ensembles don’t, bringing levels to the point where you hear every instrument but the person who has the lead is always clearly above the others – even when it’s a quiet instrument like a Baroque harp. Violinist Kinga Ujszaszi has perfected the art of playing pianissimo at supercharged energy. Cornettist Doron Sherwin, a key part of L’Arpeggiata’s sound since their early days, brings swing, brightness and purity of tone. Pluhar’s benign gaze oversees everything.
Towards the end, we were treated to the two biggest hits from Teatro d’Amore. The lament Se dolce e’l tormento was replete with pathos. Next, an 180° mood switch to Ohime, ch’io cado, the lover’s astonishment at falling to Cupid’s arrows, delivered with irrepressible good humour over a jazzy walking bass and turning into a battle between Jaroussky and Sherwin, the cornettist nearly knocked over backwards but recovering to produce such improbable fills as the opening bars of the Rondo alla Turca and the James Bond Theme.
The high spirited banter reached its apogee in the encores, arrangements of modern pop songs. First we had Besamé mucho, which became a duet between Jaroussky and Cuban gambist Lixania Fernandez, who turns out to have a fabulous contralto voice. Finally, the even more risqué Déshabillez-moi, made famous in the 1960s by Juliette Greco. One worries about how it will have gone down with the priest who oversees musical proceedings at the Abbaye and is known to be strict in such matters.
It’s been the privilege of a lifetime to have heard this joyous fusion of emotion, scholarship, showmanship and raw musical talent. I’ll leave the last word to Henry Purcell and the heart-rendingly sung last number on the bill: “Music for a while shall all your cares beguile”.
David's accommodation in Ambronay was provided by the Festival d'Ambronay
