Attentive Audience Soars Along With Hendricks’ Voice

The most notable element in Barbara Hendricks’ latest Dorothy Chandler Pavilion recital was not the American soprano’s soaring artistry, her subtlety of execution or her characteristic illumination of texts. All these we take for granted: Hendricks has brought her unique vocal and interpretive gifts here for 22 years.

What struck this listener most Wednesday night was the exceptional attentiveness of the Pavilion audience, gathered for another model song recital by the 49-year-old singer: music by Schumann, Grieg, Debussy and Sibelius, filled out with five contrasting encores. None of this music was unfamiliar, all of it was revelatory.

The irony is that, even with superior recitalists operating on concert circuits, audiences hear this important music too seldom.

Subtlety and nuance mark Hendricks’ performances, right down to her elegant garnet-red gown. The drama she produces in each item on her program is understated; what she accomplishes with small strokes of vocal punctuation and color is the opposite of mugging. Yet she projects feelings, specificity of mood, vocal details that realize the facets of each composer’s genius.

Her half-program of Schumann songs wasted no time on warm-ups; her excerpting of the “Lieder der Mignon” set and the subsequent group of eight songs immediately immersed the observer in myriad emotional states and narratives, though Hendricks seldom moved or gestured. Her longtime pianist, Staffan Scheja, assisted tellingly in delivering Schumann’s messages.

Ravishing in every sense, Edvard Grieg’s Six Songs, Opus 48, served as a reminder of the current neglect of this composer as songwriter. All of these, but in particular the final ones, “Zur Rosenzeit” and “Ein Traum,” are masterpieces. Debussy’s “Trois Chansons de Bilitis,” are better known but no less wondrous. Hendricks sang both groups most handsomely and with close scrutiny of the texts.

Six songs by Sibelius closed the program proper, their strong contrasts and musical depths invigorating; each a gem, with the climax being the most familiar, “Svarta Rosor” (Black Roses).

Hendricks proved to be in more healthful vocal form than in some previous appearances. Her slender, sometimes wiry but well-projected tone, which can bloom gorgeously, let her down only once, at the ending (on G-sharp above the staff) of Liszt’s “Oh, quand je dors.” The other encores were Schubert’s “Die Forelle,” “Der Musensohn,” “Ave Maria” and, at the end, the spiritual “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”