Word: deller
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thanks are due the directors for retaining Balthazar's two songs. Russell Oberlin, who is with Alfred Deller one of the world's two finest countertenors (male altos), sings them to perfection...
William Byrd & His Age (Alfred Deller; Basel's Wenzinger Consort of Viols; Vanguard). Music from the golden age of English music (16th-17th centuries) sung in the round, slightly hooty but flexible alto of famed Countertenor Deller. Once the listener becomes adjusted to antique shifts of harmony, the music becomes extremely poignant. But countertenors-male voices that have been trained to sing in the falsetto range, but with more than falsetto power and resonance-are less easily adjusted to. for their tones sound sexless and unsettling...
...Alfred Deller, Counter-tenor, sings these works now usually sung by contraltos, but in Bach's day by boys. Deller has an amazingly pure voice, much like a child's in quality yet capable of handling the difficult Bach vocal line. He is accompanied by a small Baroque orchestra, and the combination is probably quite close to the music's original sound. The recording is difficult to appreciate on the first hearing, but the result is a wonderful kind of impersonal exaltation. (Bach Guild...