SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Songs by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov: Olga Borodina, mezzo-soprano; Dmitri Yefimov, piano,  Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, Calif. 30.9.2007 (HS)

Having finished her run as the sultry Dalila in San Francisco Opera's Samson et Dalila Friday, mezzo soprano Olga Borodina stayed for the weekend to lavish her warm, generous sound on a program on songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The Sunday matinee was presented by Cal Performances in the resonant Zellerbach Hall at the University of California.

It was announced that Borodina was singing through a bout of bronchitis. A trouper, she had canceled none of the San Francisco Dalilas, and the sounds she made in recital would be the envy of 99 percent of the world's mezzos. Seamless throughout the range, she delivered richness down to the depths, well below the staff, and ringing high notes with no apparent change when she crossed the passagio. The only cavil, and it's a minor one, was when she tried to soften the high notes, and the voice lost a percentage of its focus. She used that to good effect in "I am alone again," the final Tchaikovsky song in the first half, letting her tone go completely vibrato-less in the phrase, "I am alone again/Again I am oppressed by anguish."

Borodina is an opera singer, first and foremost, and she brought a stage performer's sense of drama to these emotional Russian pieces, full of anguish and passion. But she scaled it back, focusing on tone and subtle shifts in color, rather than histrionics. Maybe she went a bit too far, because the encore, a reprise of "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix," Dalila's show-stopping seduction aria from Saint-Saéns' Samson, lifted her game by several levels.

Of course, she had been singing that for a month and it was "in the voice" more than the Russian songs, but it practically levitated the audience out of their seats for a rousing ovation. By contrast, the music on the printed program got generous but polite applause.

Whether it was their richer musical palette and wider range, or that she had sung through some of the challenges of singing while sick,  the Rachmaninov songs made a stronger impression than the Tchaikovsky material. Even "None but the lonely heart" sounded fine but relatively uninspired against the rich, caramel-colored, low-lying opening phrase of "Morning," which opened the Rachmaninov set.

The compression of Rachmaninov's songs, generally shorter than Tchaikovsky's, drew more pointed interpretations from Borodina, Some seemed like she sang them on one long breath. The final song on the program, "I wait for you," starts on an especially low note and soars to a passionate climax, only to subside. The arc of sound was especially aching.

Yefimov, her longtime collaborator, provided some scintillating moments of his own, especially in the fairy-dust opening and closing phrases of Tchaikovsky's "It was in the early spring."