In advance of their Purcell concert with the Ensemble Artaserse, countertenors Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky were making much of their boundary-breaking, gender-bending intentions. But the gig proved less transgressive than expected. Purcell, for starters, has already broken most boundaries for them. His songs, amalgamating the aristocratic with the demotic, transcend social structures; while his habit of withholding the sex of both lover and beloved, supposes levels of libidinal fluidity that fracture traditional concepts of gender and sexual orientation.

Each played against type with varying success. We think of Scholl as spiritual and of Jaroussky as a sensualist, prone to flirting with ideas of androgyny. A pair of contrasting nocturnes allowed each to penetrate the other's territory. Jaroussky gave us Now That The Sun, where that remarkable hovering quality in his upper registers was ravishing in the repeated Hallelujahs. Scholl, who took time to strike form, proved worryingly prosaic when it came to the erotic instructions of One Charming Night.

This exposed a persistent flaw. Scholl and Jaroussky have admitted they find singing in English difficult. While neither has terrible diction, both have trouble projecting innuendo, so they tended to be least successful when Purcell is at his most sexual. But there were fine elements. Scholl found enough voice to be able to deliver O Solitude with that familiar, otherworldly tone that sends shivers down your spine. Jaroussky was breathtaking in O Let Me Weep from The Fairy Queen. Neither was helped, though, by the Ensemble Artaserse, who spent forever trying to get in tune, only to play frequently out of it.