Upshaw’s Vocal Purity Brings Recital to Life : Music review: Soprano’s La Jolla concert of Schumann, Wolf and Ives shows that the vocal recital format can still be compelling.

Lamenting the low estate of the vocal recital has become commonplace--and with good reason. The once noble genre has become a vehicle for tired divas or a bully pulpit for inadequate vocalists. Soprano Dawn Upshaw, however, may be the singer to redeem the vocal recital.

From the first note of Robert Schumann’s “Liebeslied,” Upshaw drew the nattering Sherwood Auditorium audience into her vibrant musical orbit. She did not simply begin her songs; rather, they exploded in shimmering arcs of melody. On her generous, sophisticated Saturday evening program there were few familiar songs: she devoted the first half to earnest settings of Goethe’s poetry by Schumann and Hugo Wolf and closed the evening with a set of Charles Ives’ songs. But her intense conviction about each one made them as immediate and comfortable as remembered nursery rhymes.

In the program’s second half, Upshaw took a light-hearted excursion to the nursery with five of Modest Mussorgsky’s Children’s Songs, sung in Russian. She imbued these comic domestic dramas between young children and their omnipresent nanny with touching innocence and genuine vocal purity, allowing her opera-stage skills to enliven but never overpower Mussorgsky’s fragile creations.

The gentle twang of Upshaw’s speaking voice may belie her Chicago upbringing--she gave brief program notes from the stage--but the articulate German of her Schumann songs marked her as a born lieder singer. She floated the phrases of “Kennst du das Land?” ardently invoking its poignant nostalgia, and for the extroverted narration of “Singet nicht in Trauertonen,” she fused conversational patter with elegant vocal production.

Her clear, unforced soprano voice not only blooms gracefully on top, but remains smooth and supple throughout the range. It is not a small voice, but unlike many opera singers, she can sing with compelling intimacy.

With the exception of the tender, vulnerable “So lasst mich scheinen” (Mignon’s Song No. 3), Upshaw’s Wolf lieder did not equal the intensity of her Schumann songs. But a set of five lullabies from composers as dissimilar as Gretchaninov, De Falla, and Ives proved surprisingly compelling. She filled Da Falla’s sinuous vocal line in “Nana” with haunting tenderness.

Upshaw slipped into the Ives set like a comfortable pair of old slippers, from the swagger and panache of “The Circus Band” to the nostalgia of “Songs my Mother Taught Me” to the existential humor of “The Cage.” She balanced Ives’ saucy New England wit and wordplay with an amazing array of vocal colors and knowing inflection. I could have listened to her sing Ives until midnight.

Margo Garrett accompanied Upshaw with a clean, firm keyboard touch and enlightened understanding of every idiom. Her Mussorgsky accompaniments were especially playful and forthright, without, of course, stealing the spotlight.