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GRAMOPHONE (11/2016)
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SIGCD435



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Reviewer: Alexandra Coghlan

A successful boy treble is every record label’s nightmare. No sooner does your artist reach his peak than he is forced to retire for at least a decade. Which is no reason not to celebrate and preserve this fleeting musical moment. Thirteen-year-old Norwegian chorister Aksel Rykkvin is certainly a treble worth preserving – a mature, musical performer whose unbroken voice offers a fascinating alternative take on much of the familiar repertoire recorded here.

Ignore the exclamation mark of the title. It does Rykkvin an enormous disservice, reducing what is an accomplished and adult disc to a novelty nightmare. The music here is carefully chosen – not just textually but musically appropriate for so young a performer. There are no Queen of the Night arias nor twee arrangements of Puccini, just a solid mixture of Bach, Handel and Mozart. Some will balk at a treble singing Cherubino’s arias, but if the result isn’t exactly authentic it’s a fascinating and legitimate experiment, especially when performed as well as here, with Rykkvin living the breathless, desperate emotional confusion of ‘Non so più’.

Recordings of ‘Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen’ and ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls’ make the most of this agile, accurate voice, while Eternal Source celebrates the easy grace of his upper register. But most interesting, perhaps, are Oberto’s two arias from Handel’s Alcina. Composed for the treble William Savage, these are nevertheless uncompromisingly virtuoso pieces, especially the dramatic ‘Barbara! Io ben lo so’ – a rare example of serious operatic repertoire for this voice. Rykkvin’s passagework is nimble, his phrasing instinctive, and if he doesn’t have quite the emotional maturity 12-year-old Tolzer Knabenchor treble Elias Madler recently displayed in Katie Mitchell’s staged production for the Aix festival, this might be explained by the lack of dramatic context.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conductor Nigel Short are Rykkvin’s very classy colleagues, supporting the young soloist with some exquisite obbligato solos and consistently lively, generous tempi. All add up to a recording that’s much more than just the cute curiosity its cover suggests.

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