The world's leading counter-tenor, Andreas Scholl, sings like an angel - but looks more a javelin-thrower. He talks Eileen Battersby
Many great singers have sung the words: "Che faro senza Euridice?/Dove andro senza il mio ben?/ Che faro, dove andro/ Che faro senza il mio ben?/ Dove andro senza il mio ben?" but few have conveyed Orfeo's plaintive despair with the heartbreaking purity of German counter-tenor Andreas Scholl. His voice possesses a surreal beauty and a sublime musicality. He could well be an angel created with the express purpose of performing godly music. The reality is very different: Scholl for all his tender purity of expression stands 6ft 3in and looks more like a javelin thrower or a decathlete than the world's leading counter-tenor.
So, instead of taking up a sports scholarship, he had singing lessons. "I did do some judo," (he seems amused to hear he looks like a javelin thrower), "but I preferred singing." Scholl is good natured, relaxed, forthcoming and well used to people deciding that he doesn't look like a counter-tenor - whatever it is that a counter-tenor is supposed to look like (possibly emaciated and tortured, which Scholl is not).
A lively talker with fluent English and a boyish face to match his youthful if deep, melodic speaking voice, Scholl who will turn 40 on November 10th, appears to have lost little of the natural charm which he first brought to the international singing scene when he made his London debut in 1992. London remains the true test for any counter-tenor and Scholl enjoys the freedom of performance that comes with being an international singer. He made his opera debut at Glyndebourne singing Bertarido in Rodelinda; hopes to record Schubert Lieder; is tempted to look at early Mozart operas; and wants to perfect his English lute songs. But there is no affectation. Most of all, for all the success, he never forgets the beginning.
He tells a good story about singing in the school choir Christmas concert. He was 17 and when he stood up to sing his solo, he noticed some surprise "at this tall guy singing with a high voice". Then there was the time during a recital in Nuremberg when "some people in the audience laughed because they thought it was incredibly funny that a man could sing that high. You see that wouldn't happen in England because there has always been a counter-tenor tradition there", a tradition well served in the 20th century by Britten. "But in Germany, there isn't [such a tradition]."
None of it bothers Scholl, who freely admits to loving singing - and if his sheer physical size is helping people to rethink their misconceptions about counter-tenors and drawing new audiences to the glories of this aspect of the Baroque repertoire, Scholl is not complaining, nor should we.
He is the first counter-tenor to perform at the Last Night of the Proms. As a schoolboy he was singing Schütz, Victoria and Lassus, "Motets and Gregorian chant, and just enjoying it all". He is singing a Handel programme - "Handel loved his singers" - at the Belfast Festival, on November 2nd, two days after making his Irish debut at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
He says he is excited about coming to Ireland. "I am very interested in folk songs, Irish, Scottish and English, and composers like Dowland. English is the language after German that I feel most comfortable in, but Italian is, of course, the language of singing. I like all kinds of music, jazz, rock and pop as well. One way or the other, I have always been singing."
Yet he is also selective. This is good for his voice which, as he says himself "is always changing. You know even if you lose some weight, it affects your voice. So I think, 'I had better not get too thin, or my voice will suffer'. It's a good excuse for eating well".
For all the exactness of his art, though, he says he has always been interested in other things as well. "At the moment, I am busy with building, my days are about what sanding to do, what tiles to buy. I am restoring an old house; part of it dates back to the 17th century. I am lucky, I have good builders and it has gone well. But, you know, I have not sung for two weeks, today I will start back."
Scholl's new home is back in Eltville, the village in which he was born in 1967, the third of four children. He spent his childhood there, and aside from going to study in Switzerland, sees it as home. He is moving between his parents' home and his sister's house as well as his own. In addition to his international schedule, Scholl also returns several times a year to give masterclasses.
He used to complain about travelling making relationships difficult - has he now settled down? "I'm divorced, my daughter will be nine in December, but everything is good and I'm friends with my ex-wife." Eltville, "my village" as he describes it near the provincial town of Wiesbaden, about half an hour from Frankfurt.
"My family have a fruit and vegetable importing business. We all sang, we all sing. My father and my grandfather sang in the local choir, my brother and my sister did, and I followed them when I was seven. It was never because I had to, I just did, it was all very natural, and this is a good thing. Singing in the choir was always a part of life, and it was fun. You met your friends there and, I think this is very important, you learn to listen to others. When I meet other singers, singers who come from the same choir background, you can see the difference between them and singers who were never in choirs."
The local choir Scholl is referring to is the Kiedricher Chorbuben, the second oldest in Germany. For the young Scholl singing in the choir was as much fun as playing football. "Here I was singing all this wonderful early music, Baroque and Renaissance and just loving it, not realising that it was this famous music. So I never thought of it as 'early music' or 'specialist', it was just beautiful."
His voice broke at 13 but he continued singing soprano or alto. "No one acted as if this was odd, it was all perfectly natural. I never felt comfortable at tenor or baritone and I think this was good for my technique because I never did go through a phase of singing in those other ranges."
By the time he was 16 or 17 and still singing soprano, it was suggested to him he consider singing counter-tenor. Suddenly his voice seemed to offer the chance of a career. "I was happy about that as I had not really thought about what I wanted to do. I was interested in joining the German Border Guards, it's a bit like the SAS . . ." he sounds slightly wistful. Good eye-sight was essential, but the young Scholl was almost cross-eyed and had needed corrective surgery. "Well, I did my National Service, that was for 15 months, and I had also thought about theology. I am very interested in religion." Singing won, but Scholl realised that he needed serious specialist training and the best places were London - or the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, the early music conservatoire in Basel, Switzerland. He went to Switzerland.
"I was then almost 20 and I saw it as an adventure." His parents supported his music although initially they didn't think a living could be made from it. He was lucky with his teachers: "Richard Levitt has been my teacher, he helped me develop my technique." And Levitt has directed Scholl through his career. When Scholl was only 21 he was invited to sing the Matthew Passion, but Levitt dissuaded him, advising that the five arias and duet would be too demanding. But he agreed that the St John Passion (with two arias) was possible for the young Scholl to attempt at that stage.
With Levitt protecting his technique, Scholl was also to find a second, contrasting mentor in the flamboyant Rene Jacobs who has helped him with other aspects of performance and stage craft particularly in relation to opera. Scholl admits to trying to imagine how a character is feeling when he sings their words - "but I don't want to become too obsessed with the psychological and lose out on the feeling."
He enjoys performance because it came to him so young through the choir and he adds, "I think it is such a shame that now children don't sing in choirs. There is no time. The parents are too busy and children now have so much more and yet have lost out on the really important things like playing - and singing in choirs, something which is fun and teaches you how to mix with people."
As long ago as 1996 Scholl won a Gramophone Award for his recording of Vivaldi cantatas and has recorded many of Bach's cantatas, as well as Handel, Buxtehude and Monterverdi.
He has also performed and recorded extensively with Philippe Herreweghe including Bach's Mass in B Minor - "possibly my favourite piece of music" - as well as on both passion recordings. "I love Bach, he is the great composer, but he is challenging, very severe. Sometimes you ask is he writing for the voice or is he really thinking about the oboe or the flute?"
Bach, Scholl agrees, tends to see the human voice as another instrument. "But Handel has the best bel canto; he sees the voice as an individual. He moved in a different world, was cosmopolitan and commercial. He wrote for his audience, his theatre. Bach wrote for God."
Which would Scholl most like to meet? "Oh Mr Bach . . . but then I think I would have liked to have met Mr Handel, I would have liked to have lived in their time, to sing for both of them and ask them, 'is this the way you want it sung?'."
• Counter-tenor Andreas Scholl performs a programme of music by Handel accompanied by the Ulster Orchestra at the NCH, Dublin on Wed Oct 31 and at the Grand Opera House on Fri Nov 2, as part of the Belfast Festival at Queens
Belfast festival spotlight
As well as Andreas Scholl, other highlights of the two-week-long Belfast Festival at Queen's, which opens tonight with a concert with the Chieftains and the Ulster Orchestra, include the first festival production for many years, Brian Irvine's award-winning opera The Tailor's Daughter, with young musical talent from throughout the North. Truth in Translationis award-winning musical theatre from South Africa, and other theatre includes Macbethat Crumlin Road Gaol; and Tinderbox's The Duke of Hope, a serious comedy about drink and denial by Conor Grimes and Alan McKee.
Acclaimed choreographer Rafael Bonachela brings his new company to Belfast for Voices, with music by electronic composer Matthew Herbert. Other dance includes Siobhan Davies' company; and The Wild Party, promising sex, jealousy, contempt, and brawls from Rosie Kay Dance Company.
Ute Lemper performs with the Ulster Orchestra at the Grand Opera House while Bach's Mass in B Minor is performed by the Dunedin Consort in Clonard Monastery and there are recitals, to celebrate violinist Joseph Joachim, by the Psophos Quartet, The Florestan Trio and the Jerusalem Quartet. Violinist Benjamin Schmid performs with Dejan Lazic and also with the Beni Schmid Trio.
The musical line-up also includes John Prine, Mose Allison and The Blue Nile.
On the visual arts side, internationally acclaimed artists Marc Didou and Gabriele Leidloff show work exploring the use of medical imaging technologies in art practice.
