When a star countertenor and a chameleon-like pianist take hold of the Baroque, stylistic certainties begin to waver. And it is precisely there that the surprise begins. 
By 
With If music…, Jakub Józef Orliński and Michał Biel offer a Baroque journey that openly embraces freedom: Purcell, Fux, Handel, and even Bach become the terrain for a sensitive exploration, released from the dogmas of historically informed performance. The duo, already close collaborators on Farewells, embraces a personal aesthetic in which the modern piano does not imitate, but rather reveals differently. This is an album that favours sensitivity over orthodoxy and proposes another way of inhabiting the Baroque.
The album is arranged in two clearly defined parts: first Purcell, from whom Orliński chiefly selects music for the stage, then Handel, approached through operatic arias in which virtuosity and dramatic tension intertwine. Between the two, an aria by Fux acts as a bridge, like a nod to a Central European Baroque style with which the duo is well acquainted. The conclusion, entrusted to solo piano in a transcription of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, comes as a meditative breath after an hour of human passions. The booklet, which brings together the sung texts, translations, and notes of intention, clearly sets out the duo’s approach and serves as a genuine listening guide. The whole forms a coherent, almost dramaturgical narrative, in which each piece seems to respond to the title If music…. Borrowed from Purcell, that title thus becomes a thread running through the programme: music as a conditional, as an open hypothesis.
The Polish countertenor here cultivates the expressive versatility that has become his signature. The two versions of “If music be the food of love” included on the album make this particularly clear: the first, more sharply contrasted, brings out the emotional complexity of the text, while the second, more luminous, retains its almost naïve spontaneity. This ability to change skin from one piece to the next is one of the album’s charms, even if the inner articulation of certain excerpts can sometimes lack unity, as though the affects followed one another a little too distinctly. In the “Cold Song”, Orliński dares a fragility that is almost whispered, verging on a rattle, gradually torn open by flashes of anguish. Elsewhere, in “Furibondo, spira il vento” or “Your awful voice”, an incisive virtuosity emerges, carried by sovereign breath control. The very close recording made at Teldex Studio highlights the texture of the voice, its edges as much as its velvet. The choice of the modern piano — fully acknowledged in the booklet — is one of the project’s most striking gestures. Rather than trying to make his instrument sound like a harpsichord, Michał Biel exploits its resonance, tenderness and, at times, a touch of Romanticism. In “Fairest isle”, the velvety touch wraps itself around the vocal line with an almost chamber-like delicacy. In the “Cold Song”, by contrast, the piano’s harmonic depth heightens the dramatic tension. This instrumental freedom, which may unsettle purists, belongs to a coherent approach: to offer a personal reading of the Baroque, not against history, but in dialogue with it.
If music… belongs to a current tendency: that of performers who, while perfectly familiar with the codes of historically informed performance, choose to move away from them in order to assert their own voice more clearly. This album is not a manifesto, but a proposition: that of a plural, shifting Baroque, capable of being reborn in unexpected forms. An invitation to listen differently.
Technical details
Title: If music…
Composers: Henry Purcell (1659-1695), Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759), Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741)
Performers: Jakub Józef Orliński, contertenor; Michał Biel, piano
Label: Warner Classics
Format: digital, CD, LP
Release date: 27 mars 2026
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