Critic’s Notebook: Golden Apple Sauce — and a larger-than-life serving of Jakub Orliński

Also published in Die Presse: Hier rockt der Elvis der Alten Musik: Orliński im Konzerthaus

Jakub Józef Orliński Beyond Il Pomo d'Oro (Erato, 2024) US | UK | DE

Jakub Józef Orliński Anima Aeterna Il Pomo d'Oro (Erato, 2021) US | UK | DE

The Elvis of Early Music

In his Konzerthaus show, the Polish countertenor did his thing while the band enabled him.

Ten musicians in black, in a dimmed Great Hall, began to send the haunting sounds of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea into the semi-darkness of Vienna’s Konzerthaus. The sell-out crowd, well younger than average (possibly padded with some incentivized tickets?), perked its ears as the members of Il Pomo d’Oro dug into their historical instruments.

And then Jakub Józef Orliński strode onstage, in a getup that looked halfway like a black garment bag and which I would swear was at least in part self-designed. Under better light one later noticed: the musicians of Il Pomo d’Oro are dressed the same way. It’s all part of the staging (though that might be overstating it)… the dramaturgically woven show titled Beyond, conceived by Orliński and musicologist Yannis François. Aptly timed to go with the newly released album of the same name (Warner; meanwhile vinyl-lovers beware: the LP-version contains considerably less music than the CD).

At first, it wasn’t immediately obvious why there is such hype (and apparently there is) around Orliński. The voice seems rather small, doesn’t carry particularly well in the large hall, and sounds somewhat – if not unpleasantly – mealy. The generously applied “accent vibrato” recalls (late) Dominique Visse. Yet already the lyrical passages – of which there would be many during the uninterrupted ninety-minute arc – have real intensity. That small voice-business dissipated quickly, it turned out: as he warmed up, moving from Caccini via Frescobaldi to Strozzi, Cavalli, and Netti (rare, obscure bits and pieces, almost all of them), Orliński inched toward full form.

Still, things came properly alive only about an hour into the show when lutenist Miguel Rincón whipped out his Renaissance guitar and all but rocked the hall. The singing briefly became secondary, even though Orliński, on vocal break or not, made sure always to be the gravitational center of the room.

That the individual Renaissance rarities had been stitched together into a storyline is something you more or less had to have been told while the pervasive tone of despair in these pieces hardly lends itself to vivid dramaturgy. Good, then, that Orliński eventually spiced things up – strolling through the aisles while singing (which produced some delightful acoustic effects), playing the lovesick old woman in “Quanto più la donna invecchi” with comedy bordering on slapstick, or shaking his hips to wild cadenzas in the encores. The fans adored it; they lapped it up: roaring enthusiasm in a full house. That he also benefited considerably from outstanding musicians – above all cornett, harp, violins, and viola – should not go unmentioned.


Follow @ClassicalCritic