SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Ben Heppner and Asher Fisch in Recital McCaw Hall, Seattle, 28.08.08 [BJ]

“Out of the strong came forth sweetness” – the Biblical tag might not be a bad description of what happened in McCaw Hall on Thursday evening.

In town to serve as judge and conductor respectively for Seattle Opera’s second International Wagner Competition, Ben Heppner and Asher Fisch joined forces on 14 August for a recital that delivered some expected pleasures and others less foreseeable. Letting one of the great heroic voices of our time loose on the supposed Gallic delicacy of Henri Duparc’s songs might seem like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But Canada’s most famous tenor since Jon Vickers demonstrated to a delighted audience that the bold conquest of Wagnerian dramatic roles is far from being his only strong suit.

Well supported at the piano by Fisch, Schubert’s grandly rhetorical “Dem Unendlichen,” two attractive Liszt songs, and Wagner’s soulful Wesendonck Lieder were projected with enormous solidity of tone in the Germanic tradition. Yet when, after intermission, Heppner moved to the contrasting world of the French mélodie, a quite different voice instantly made itself heard, along with an impressive sensitivity to the nuances of the language.

Some of Duparc’s texts partake of the seemingly fragile “it-rains-in-my-heart” manner often associated with French versification, but in songs like “Soupir” and “Le manoir de Rosemonde” there is passion too, and Heppner deployed consummate skill in moving between these expressive poles. And while, despite an occasional constricted note, his bigger moments in both the German and French groups offered the kind of visceral thrill you expect from an accredited Heldentenor, it was the more delicate touches that I found most compelling.

Heppner spun a line that was at once supple and firm, and achieved an intimacy of rapport remarkable in so large a hall. The official program concluded with a group of popular-style American songs, and after the first of these, Ernest Charles’s “Let my song fill your heart,” Heppener peeled off his bow tie, came figuratively down to the footlights, and showed himself to be a communicator and entertainer of rare charisma.

His anecdotal account of telling his aurally challenged mother by telephone about his then imminent Metropolitan Opera debut could have been a Mike Nichols/Elaine May routine. But even in the lightest of the songs, and in a generous selection of encores ending with Haydn Wood’s irresistibly peachy “Roses of Picardy”, the artistry was as evident as the charm.

Bernard Jacobson
 

This review also appeared in the Seattle Times.