Soprano Emma Kirkby’s Artistry Shines in Recital

The contrast couldn’t have been more pointed. Outside, on the plaza of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a large party gathered for drinks and dining and loud amplified rock music. Inside the Bing Theater, a few feet away, a considerably humbler number congregated for a concert of English Baroque music sung by the celebrated soprano Emma Kirkby.

Kirkby’s recital was like that small film you cherish while everyone else is whooping up the latest explosion fest. Her art is gentle and charming, and it wears its virtuosity demurely. But make no mistake, the artistry is there.

Is a description needed of the voice that has graced over a hundred recordings? Suffice to say that it was at its best Wednesday, silken and agile, chirping, wafer-thin in soft passages, vibrantly glowing in loud.

With the engaging accompaniment of Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, she opened with an early Handel cantata, “Nice, che fa?,” showing her quiet expressiveness right off: a sustained tone held without vibrato, slightly flattened like a blue note, and popping bursts of ornamentation in aria repeats.

A set of rarely heard songs by Maurice Greene showed his music as melodious and tender. Kirkby’s quick trills and flitting decorations in “Bel mirar” fit the image of “the first green shoots of spring” described in the song.

Performed without applause, the second half interspersed songs by John Blow and Purcell with a harpsichord suite by William Croft written for amateur performance and thus wonderfully easygoing and diverting. The songs could be subtle, as in Blow’s “The world was hush’d,” where the spurned lover’s use of the word “faithless” is quietly reiterated in the harpsichord.

Or not so subtle. Purcell’s “From rosy bow’rs” poked fun at the mad aria genre, which Kirkby delivered broadly, dancing, in high spirits. Her politically incorrect encore, William Boyce’s “When Orpheus went down,” had some bite: The famed musician is rewarded by the devil taking his difficult wife.