The first recording with a countertenor world!

There are hundreds of recordings of the song cycle Die Winterreise by Franz Schubert - but this one is unique. Guaranteed! After Schubert's songs are not here by a baritone (as usual), (how many times), but by a Altus (as never before) sung not by a tenor.

What is Altus? A Altus, which is called in English also "countertenor" is a classic vocal category of male singers whose vocal range with a female contralto is comparable. For a layman does that sound sometimes as if singing a woman.

Countertenor and Altus have their roots in history. Choirs were since the late Middle Ages only Männerchöre with fairly limited scope of bass to the normal tenor. In the 16th century the tonal range of the men's voices has been extended upwards. Choral compositions were more expressive, dramatic, passionate, broke away from religious choral singing. And thus began the dominance of high male voices, which for 500 years, until the 19th century, continued. High voices before the 19th century is almost always men singing in church, concert and opera.

A Altus, as these photographs show, equally angry growl flatter as sweet, singing and shouting for joy to death saddened and his game abgewinnen an erotic stimulus, like a woman's voice can not. Which is all the more the case when we are dealing with such a well-trained an d highly cultured voice as here.

The Israeli singer Zvi Emanuel Marial is an exceptional talent. He grew up with music, but first he was just like the tenor Fritz Wunderlich horn player in the orchestra. For a singer, it is always good to know how orchestral musicians think and a singer who can play Horn, has a breath control that allows him long cantilenas and large arches. In the heart, says the singer, but he was always a countertenor, but really aware he was the first, when he met the singing teacher Marianne Fischer-copper, which said to him: You are a countertenor, and I will make you out. Said and done!

Since the completion of his training is Emanuel Marial, the estimated addition to the great baroque composer of modern music as well as the Beatles and David Bowie, all demand as a soloist. He sings at the Salzburg Festival and the Mannheim Mozart Summer, as well as in opera houses in Amsterdam, Berlin and Mannheim.

This is the most extraordinary recording of Winterreise, I know.