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Soprano Michelle Bradley – Veni, vidi, vici

Art and more importantly its interpretation, is all about personality. Music Academy alumna, soprano Michelle Bradley, returned to her vocal training grounds last Sunday, dripping in recent kudos and rave reviews from triumphs at the Metropolitan Opera, San Diego Opera, and Chicago Lyric Opera. Presenting the second of three recitals by various artists as part of the new Mariposa Series at the Music Academy, Bradley offered an intimate program with her steady-as-a-rock collaborator, former Music Academy faculty artist, pianist Brian Zeger.

A sold-out crowd of 100 or more savvy patrons found themselves in the intimate embrace of two nearly overwhelming phenomena; the Music Academy’s elegant and creaky characterful Lehmann Hall with its chandeliers, turn-of-last-century ceiling molding and wood floors, and the utterly transparent, pitch-perfect, and disarmingly Kentucky-cheerful gobsmack talent of Michelle Bradley.

2014 grand-prize winner of the Music Academy’s Marilyn Horne Song Competition, Bradley has come a long way since, and lit up the tiny recital room in the main house last Sunday with a fascinating program, tempered mindfully against acoustic overload. Wearing a bright red evening gown that added volcanic energy to the proceedings while also melting hearts, Bradley offered a program of Samuel Barber (Hermit Songs, Op. 29); three songs by Reynaldo Hahn; four of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder; two elegant arrangements of traditional hymns; and an encore medley of Whitney Houston classics.

Opening her recital with Hermit Songs, composed by Barber in 1953 and premiered by Leontyne Price, Michelle Bradley wasted no time confirming her nuanced capacity for scintillating vocal color, which she has nurtured to maturity since 2014. It was not difficult, because of Bradley’s unabashed personal interpretive temperament, to hear also a timbre in her mid-low range, or an earnest certainty of declamation, reminiscent of Price.

Of the ten songs in the set, St. Ita’s Vision and The Heavenly Banquet were prime examples of Bradley’s exquisite, clarified vocal color, while the last two, The Praises of God and The Desire for Hermitage, gave the soprano opportunity to unleash, albeit on the tight leash of Lehmann Hall’s acoustic environment, a generous dollop of her enormous vocal soundd.

Three love songs by Venezuelan-born French composer Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) offered a mid-meal sorbet in quasi-Baroque styling. À Chloris (To Chloris – 1913) fashioned compositionally with a French Overture conceit, provided Bradley with broad swaths of legato phrasing, which she executed with mesmerizing vocal fluidity.

Quand je fus pris au pavillon (When I was lured to her love nest - 1894) to a dance tune in Baroque manner, found the soprano in lighter, more playful voice as she canted male grievance: “If I had only been a falcon, or had the wings to fly away, I’d have saved myself from her.” Another opportunity for sustained phrasing, Si mes vers avaient des ailes (If my poems had wings – 1888) composed at the age of 14, ended the set in gentle, post-Romantic manner to Victor Hugo’s “If only my poems had the wings of the soul.”

Finishing the art song portion of their program, Michelle Bradley and Brian Zeger performed four of Gustav Mahler’s five Rückert-Lieder (1901-1902) beginning with Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft (I breathed a gentle fragrance) with its sprawling vocal landscape. Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty) one of the most challenging of the songs technically, found Bradley’s top voice superbly focused and capacious. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder (Look not into my songs) with its difficult intervallic writing, was precisely in pitch, no small feat. The last and most famous of the Rückert-Lieder, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (Lost am I to the world) gave Bradley the narrative freedom to reveal her greatest asset, emotional vulnerability.

A gorgeous arrangement by James Miller of the traditional hymn I Am Seeking for a City and Margarinet Bond’s discreet arrangement of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand fired up Bradley’s inner gospel, as well as her mighty voice. And to make the evening particularly memorable, sitting down at the piano Bradley morphed into Vegas mode, a deliciously mesmerizing and delightfully loose medley of Whitney Houston tunes, after a little warm up doodle – Puccini?

Daniel Kepl | Performing Arts Review

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