Music Review : Soprano Karol Bennett Shines in Recital

The only thing wrong with Karol Bennett’s recital Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was that there were few people there to hear it.

Before a small (and lucky) gathering in Bing Theater, the young soprano--a graduate of Yale and winner of the 1993 Pro Musicis International Award--offered an intelligently chosen program of songs by Schubert, Brahms, Faure, Rachmaninoff and Harbison, memorably delivered and exquisitely sung.

Ably seconded by pianist-composer John McDonald, Bennett showed complete talents for the task at hand, but perhaps her most distinguishing characteristic was her care for words. She made their clear pronunciation the starting point for the music, building their sounds and stresses into carefully sculpted phrases, all the while avoiding any operatic flights of vocalism that might obscure them. In other words, her singing talked.

This was accomplished without preciousness or undue theatricality, in a light soprano of resonant focus, glimmering tone and creamy fluidity.

In John Harbison’s remarkable 1988 song cycle “Simple Daylight” (minus its briefest song), she revealed her gift for understatement. Instead of stating the obvious qualities of Harbison’s angular impulses and Michael Fried’s bleak, wounded poetry, she etched long lines over wide spaces, while, likewise, McDonald found expressive nuance in the composer’s clattering accompaniment.

The silky elegance and delicacy of Bennett’s voice was displayed to glowing effect in four Faure melodies --”En sourdine,” “Notre amour,” “Toujours” and “Adieu”--though she never slighted their breathless fervency.

In Schubert and Brahms, she used her full resources to create mini-dramas, but always with an ear for proportion and intimacy. She even found fresh insights into Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise and, in encore, Brahms “Lullaby.”