MUSIC REVIEWS : Artistry, Restraint in Blochwitz Recital

Word-of-mouth, and print, about Hans Peter Blochwitz had evidently reached the Los Angeles area, to judge by the sizable, tuned-in audience present in Ambassador Auditorium on Saturday for the German tenor’s local debut.

The singer proved tentative in his approach to the first two of the five Schubert favorites that opened a program hardly notable for musical substance: an earthbound “Musensohn” and “Geheimes.” But there was charm and sweetness of tone in the subsequent “Heidenroslein,” while the requisite sense of uneasy calm was communicated in a hushed, fine-spun “Wanderers Nachtlied.” The vocal heft and dramatic intensity required by “Erlkonig,” however, proved suitable neither to the tenor’s intimate style nor his soft-grained, fragile instrument.

Singer and songs were in harmony for much of the subsequent group of Brahms’ German folksong arrangements, remarkably so in the musical innocence masking the cruel textual heart of “Es ging ein Maidlein zarte,” and the gentle humor of “Wie komm ich denn zur Tur herein.”

Other rewards came in a selection of folksong settings by Benjamin Britten, outstanding among them those that took advantage of the singer’s gift for the simple, telling vocal and verbal inflection: “Little Sir William,” another bit of gore disguised as folksy innocence, whose denouement proved particularly chilling in Blochwitz’s understated delivery; the touching “The Trees They Grow So High,” and “The Salley Gardens,” its text flawlessly enunciated, the poignant accompaniment delivered with utmost grace by Eric Schneider, elsewhere a fluent if often overly reticent partner at the piano.

Of the two operatic arias listed, “Una furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” lacked sensuousness of tone while stretching Blochwitz’s instrument to its outermost limits, whereas Lenski’s aria, “Kuda, kuda,” from Tchaikovsky’s “Evgeny Onegin” at once touched the heart and ravished the ear through sensitive word-painting and dynamic subtlety.