<<  -- 4 --  Roderic Dunnett    A COUNTERTENOR VIRTUOSO

At Magdalen the undergraduate choral scholars, known as 'Academical Clerks', were taught by the tenor David Lowe, who now teaches at the Royal Academy. 'That was great,' says Blaze, 'because David, who's fantastic at working with young singers has a real sense of how not to push voices too much, but also how to open them out a little bit and let them find their feet. The Oxford degree is very academic-biased, mainly music history and keyboard theory-oriented. But I was fortunate, in that one of the history papers covered Medieval to Renaissance while the next one starts at mid-Baroque and goes right through Classical, Romantic and Contemporary. So more than half focused on the early repertoire which I was absolutely fired up by.'

Even with a degree there are still, he says, surprises : 'For instance, Robert King's recent Hyperion series of recordings of "Contemporaries of Bach" -- Schelle (CDA 67260), Knüpfer (CDA 67160) and Kuhnau (CDA67059).'

'Here was a period of early music I had studied in depth, yet I'd barely heard of these people, apart from as mere names in a textbook!' The same might be said of the superb disc, with Peter Holman and the Parley of Instruments, of rare German Baroque, including Bernard, Geist, Krieger, Hofmann and Rosenmüller, on CDA 67079 [listen].

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