Review: A black tenor shows two sides of his identity on recital stage
By Anne Midgette Anne Midgette Classical music critic Email Bio Follow Classical music critic April 12 at 5:07 PM A song recital offers a performer nowhere to hide. As a rule, there are no costumes, no characters, no sets. On Thursday night at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, the tenor Lawrence Brownlee responded to the challenge, in a repeat visit to Vocal Arts DC, by pushing his comfort zone and revealing new dimensions of himself.
Repertory staples such as Schumann’s song cycle “Dichterliebe” can be a singer’s biggest challenge: It’s hard when the audience knows the piece so well and can compare you to dozens of other singers. Brownlee, a specialist in Italian bel canto opera, is not known for either his German or his song repertoire, but his melting voice certainly had the right weight and color for this music.
It’s not quite home turf yet, as Brownlee himself freely acknowledged. There was something a little studied about his approach at times, though his German was clear and accurate, and there were hints of a forced quality in some of the bigger songs, such as “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome.
The piece struggled mightily, at times, to get huge points across. In the two songs called “Hope,” the music sought to bind fragments of association, litanies of the different kinds of hope and the different sustenances they offer.
This, to me, was the most striking feature of the work: Tailor-made for Brownlee, it fit him like a glove and made him look and sound great. From the first notes, he sounded assured, direct, glorious and at home. Not many new cycles are so well written for the voice, and the assurance this music seemed to give him — showing, in effect, who he was — pushed him into even higher artistic gear.
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