MUSIC REVIEWS : Battle Presents an Artful Program at Cerritos Center

Now in her third decade before the musical public, American soprano Kathleen Battle retains her vocal good health and her exigent artistic profile adamantly. As shown in her latest local recital, Saturday night at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Battle’s musical canniness and beautiful singing remain her strongest assets; her glamorous good looks and disingenuous stage presence are a pleasant bonus.

She returned to give a generous and artfully arranged, if repertorially predictable, recital, one offering arias by Handel and Bellini, lieder by Wolf, Liszt and Richard Strauss, and a group of spirituals.

A cynic, or one who has observed Battle’s numerous local appearances over the past 20 years, might find the soprano’s mannered movements and her self-conscious exits, entrances and audience-acknowledging gestures off-putting and the opposite of spontaneous.

But to find them so would require ignoring the musical astuteness of her singing, the truth of her artistry and her often heartfelt performances of great music. Her musicality, her considerable technique and her reliable high notes are not diva’s tricks, but genuine and cherishable resources that she uses with pointed intelligence.

She was assisted on this occasion--one can usually count on seeing another new pianist at every Battle recital--by Cliff Jackson, a virtuoso of the collaborator’s art who managed to play stylishly and handsomely while hanging on accommodatingly to the soprano’s every word.

Throughout the program, expressive and seductive singing characterized all the musical presentations. If there were high points, they would have to include the aria “Tornami a vagheggiar,” from Handel’s “Alcina”; all five parts of the German- and French-language Liszt group, but particularly its closing, “Oh! quand je dors,” and the resplendent four spirituals that ended the program proper. Battle, at 47, remains a major artist in her prime.

Her two encores were a song by Turina and “Precious Lord,” which she told her full audience (1,644 listeners) was the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite hymn, and which she sang in honor of his birthday.