Jessica Rivera, Promising Young Soprano, On Her Way

Emerging young artists are the lifeblood of the classical music business; without them, the field would turn, in short order, into a museum filled with mostly dull relics.

Instead, they keep turning up, to our delight. Sunday afternoon at Pepperdine University in Malibu, the young artist who emerged, highly accomplished, fully equipped and most promising was soprano Jessica Rivera. The California-trained soprano has a healthy voice, the beginnings of expertise in connecting words and sound, admirable enunciation and high notes to burn. She should go far.

What she delivered, on the prestigious Sunday afternoon series in Raitt Recital Hall, was a program of important music by American composers, writers from Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (born in 1867) to Alan Smith (born in 1955). Also included was Samuel Barber’s masterpiece, the “Hermit Songs” (1953) and four pieces by the great but sometimes underrated Lee Hoiby.

To all of these varied musical expressions, Rivera and her able collaborator, pianist Elvia Puccinelli, applied pointed musicality, intelligent pacing, generous but not finicky articulations.

Smith’s inventive and handsome settings of four folk songs, in which Rivera and Puccinelli were joined by violist David Walther, became the high point of the afternoon. Here, the soprano’s dramatic presentation matched the ardor and contrasts of Smith’s brilliant arrangements, with pianist and violist contributing wholeheartedly to the total.

Rivera’s first encore was Copland’s “Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?”