I remember the American soprano Kathleen Battle as having one of the purest voices I have ever heard. Most New Yorkers have not had much chance to hear it firsthand since her famous run-in with Joseph Volpe and the Metropolitan Opera in 1994.
Kathleen Battle in her solo recital on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall.
After Mr. Volpe’s de facto banishment of Ms. Battle for what was deemed over-the-top temperamental behavior, she has had a reasonably busy career in other parts, and on Sunday afternoon her management, Columbia Artists, presented her in what was more or less a re-entry recital at Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Battle has a loyal fan base, and it brought down the house before she had sung a note. Peter Gelb, Mr. Volpe’s successor as general manager of the Met, was spotted in the audience, and one can assume that she was singing as much for him as for everybody else. The program was tasteful and subdued, running from Purcell through Schubert and Mendelssohn to Liszt, Fauré and Spanish composers, and ending with spirituals.
The Purcell, with Daniel Swenberg playing the theorbo, was not promising, uncertain in pitch and vague in delivery. One started to recognize Ms. Battle’s distinguishing qualities in the Schubert and Mendelssohn songs: a lovely, centered quality that carries easily, even at relatively quiet levels.
Relative quiet was the rule on Sunday. Ms. Battle put pressure on her voice only at rare moments, a brief one being in “Die Lorelei” by Liszt. For most singers the little scooping attacks and other vocal mannerisms that add charm to a voice in full bloom can be trying in later years. But by getting past those and a few odd stage mannerisms, one arrived at a simple musicality that gave Schubert’s “Alinde” and Fauré’s “Mandoline” a charming innocence. Ms. Battle brought down the house again, deservedly so, in “Good News,” sung unaccompanied toward the end.
The downside to Ms. Battle’s reticence was that it asked her fine pianist, Ted Taylor, to play extremely softly. His piano sang out nicely in the Liszt’s solo moments but dropped precipitously to a barely audible murmur every time Ms. Battle began to sing. Much of her music’s effect lay in the accompaniments. One wanted more of a partnership.
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