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George Birnbaum
[Editor's Note: This article is printed from, and with the permission of, George Birnbaum's Classical CD Scout , a bi-monthly newsletter devoted to reviews and commentary on new and older classical CD releases. Subscriptions are available from Classical CD Scout , P.O. Box 1311, New Canaan, CT 06840.]
Last fall, when the Metropolitan Museum continued its series of ''Conversations with ...'' distinguished singers, the guest was pioneering American countertenor Russell Oberlin (more about what the term ''countertenor'' means below). The occasion was the re-issue on CD, on the Lyrichord label, of several of Oberlin's celebrated recordings of medieval and English Renaissance music made in the 1950s. Several hundred people showed up to hear the singer interviewed by critic Tim Page. They also bought out all the CDs displayed in the lobby by the record company. No one was more surprised than Russell Oberlin himself.
''I really didn't think so many people remembered me. After all, I stopped performing in public over twenty-five years ago,'' Mr. Oberlin told me during our conversation in early January. The setting was his apartment near Gramercy Park, a living space as modest, cheerful, and aesthetically pleasing as its occupant. Without the impetus of a public relations agent, I had sought out Mr. Oberlin after my delighted hearing of the Lyrichord CDs. Let me confess ''up front'' that the motive was partly personal, since both of us grew up in Akron, Ohio. Mr. Oberlin left Akron in 1948 to study at Juilliard, and made his distinctive mark upon the professional music scene almost as soon as he graduated in 1951. I still was living in Akron in the 1960s when I first heard Russell Oberlin's unmistakable voice on record. When I learned that this world-famous singer was a ''local boy,'' I was even more intrigued.
Russell Oberlin was also the first internationally known American countertenor, but the term is a bit misleading in his case and requires some explanation.
Probably the most notable musical trend in the second half of our century has been the explosion of interest in ''early'' music (i.e., music before Mozart and all the way back to Hildegard and other composers of the High Middle Ages). Performance of this repertory required a fleet of...