Sylvan inhabits the emotions of ‘Winterreise’

A singer’s operatic skills don’t necessarily guarantee success in the smaller-scale lieder repertory. But when baritone Sanford Sylvan sang Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise” on Sunday afternoon in the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall, his background must have helped.

In the past, Sylvan has supplied vivid characterizations in Peter Sellars’ stagings of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas and in roles written for him by John Adams. And that’s exactly what he did in “Winterreise,” a work he was originally scheduled to sing in Orange County in March but had to postpone because of an illness.

The test in Schubert’s bleak song cycle, after all, is making us care about a man who chronicles in 24 songs the breakdown of a failed love affair. No amount of fine singing or reliable technique by itself can achieve this goal. It requires the ability to project an authentic personality, one reflecting the nuances and complexities Schubert found in the poetry of Wilhelm Muller and rendered so perfectly.

This isn’t to scant the technique Sylvan demonstrated. He has a strong lyric instrument that can range from gentle introspection to declamatory anger. He can spin out a long line or break it for dramatic effect. He makes grace note turns sound effortless. He followed the feelings in the texts and made them his own.

Pointing relentlessly toward death, “Winterreise” has a shocking ending when the narrator finds no space at a cemetery. He reacts with bravado, anger, bizarre hallucinations and, finally, desolate, absurdist weariness. Sylvan captured all these emotions in detail.

Pianist David Breitman, his longtime collaborator, was an equal partner in the endeavor.