Reviews

Te Kanawa, Papp NCH, Dublin

Kiri Te Kanawa is one of those classical performers who have managed to become a household name. She's now in her early 1960s, though you wouldn't for a moment think so, from either the freshness of her appearance or her comportment on stage.

Vocally, of course, things are different. New Zealand's best-known singer is in the twilight of a career which made her one of the most-loved sopranos before the public in the last three decades of the 20th century. She is at a point where physical control is diminishing while the insight born of long experience is still free to grow.

The challenge is one of finding the right balance, of gauging conflicts between means and ends, while still delivering to the audience something of the characteristic tonal beauty that brought them to hear her in the first place.

One of the first precautions taken in this Music Network benefit concert at the National Concert Hall was to make the programme short.

Lyric fm's Eamonn Lawlor came on stage at the start of the evening to offer an over-extended, fluffily hagiographic warm-up. It was certainly strange to hear him suggest that Music Network were righting some kind of wrong by saving Irish listeners a trek abroad to hear Te Kanawa perform. This appearance was actually her ninth in Ireland since 1992.

Te Kanawa was on far finer form than when I last heard her, tackling a wide range of songs at the Helix in 2003. She did, it must be said, take a little time to warm up. But, then, a lot of singers don't hit their stride until they're through the baroque items they place at the start of an evening.

But two arias by Mozart reminded one of the sensitive, sensual delivery that won this singer so many friends. Elsewhere, too, there were moments of gold, but also reminders of base metal, in matters of off-centre tuning as well as frailty and security of tone.

Full-on delivery is no longer the safe option it was for the Te Kanawa of old. But the second half of the programme showed her mapping out a new territory of lighter touch, with moments that were almost like crooning, but without a microphone.

These explorations, in songs by Copland, Tosti, Puccini and Wolf-Ferrari, were only made viable because of the adaptive intimacy of Jonathan Papp at the piano, always prepared to be the perfect shadow for the evening's star.