One, an alto, delivers incisive attacks. He launches, exhilarated, his phrases with a bright vocal radiance and easily approaches the high notes with a broad, melodious, and pleasant voice. The other, a countertenor, leads us into the mysterious depths of his inner timbre. He captivates with impressive modulations that reveal an extensive tessitura and move with the touching resilience of his low notes.
From Monteverdi’s “Vorrei baciarti” to Bononcini’s “Sempre piangero,” passing through Heinrich Schütz’s sacred work “Lobet den Herren,” followed by Henry Purcell’s famous “Sound the trumpet” – the hit among countertenors – and ending with the brilliant Arcadian duo by Georg Friedrich Handel “Caro autor di mia doglia,” alto Matthieu Peyrègne and countertenor Gabriel Jublin formed, for the duration of a drink at Bar Baroque in old Nice, a duo of exceptional quality. A duo whose youthful enthusiasm, communicated to the privileged audience attending their first concert on Saturday, October 23, was certainly not the least of their assets.
Accompanied on the viola da gamba by Nina Rouyer and on the theorbo by Hugues Dauscher, with an astonishing complicity for a first joint performance, the two young artists, both instrumentalists and trained in the PACA region, skillfully played their respective vocal ranges.
If Gabriel Jublin is currently pursuing a Master’s in medieval-renaissance singing at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in the class of Dominique Vellard, he regularly attends the master classes of Richard Levitt, Andreas Scholl, and Gerd Türk in Basel. Master classes (those of Dominique Vellard as well as Gerd Türk’s) that Matthieu Peyrègne also attended in 2007 and in 2010. The future of baroque artists does not only seem promising. Considering the strong applause from the audience that evening, it even seems assured.
