New York Classical Review

Young Concert Artists is a long-standing organization that helps launch the careers of talented classical musicians. A list of a few of the names they’ve supported shows their impact: Julia Bullock, Anne Akiko Meyers, Jeremy Denk, Richard Goode, Dawn Upshaw, Mason Bates, Pinchas Zukerman, and Randall Goosby. That’s quite a track record.

One of the new talents on their roster is mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner. She delivered a concise and impressive recital Thursday afternoon at the Morgan Library, singing songs of Mahler and Dominick Argento. Pianist Shawn Chang accompanied her, and did much more, transcribing Mahler’s Rückert Lieder for a chamber ensemble of piano, flute, clarinet, violin, and cello. That opened the program, and Argento’s The Diary of Virginia Woolf, with just voice and piano, followed. The event was lightly staged and blocked by director Haley Stamats.

That’s a meaty program that covers a wide range of expression, positive feelings as profound as the negative ones. Wagner had the expressive seriousness to match this, well modulated in terms of force and weight, and unmannered. She has an attractive sound, a rich, rounded color that seems pitched lower than it is, hinting at contralto timbres, and feels like it has substance without heaviness. It sounds youthful with a touch of experience.

That was an ideal sound for the Mahler songs. She sang them in what has come to be the original order with the linden tree song, “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft” first and “Um Mitternacht” last, and the gentle love song to Alma Mahler, “Liebst du um Schonheit,” second.

This was a highly musical performance, putting the notes first and letting the meaning and drama come through them. Wagner sang with a feeling of long phrases, not just excellent breath support through each vocal line but an elegant legato that gathered each separate line into an extended sensation. This was a subtle and intelligent approach, a story-telling feeling in music that is usually sung as a series of emotional vignettes.

Chang’s transcription was well-crafted, but there was a noticeable contrast between Wagner and all the instrumentalists. She sang slightly behind the beat and with the flexibility and sensitivity around tempo and rhythm that are fundamental to Mahler, while the accompaniment was exact and somewhat rigid. It wasn’t clear if this was intentional, but the contrast did serve to heighten Wagner’s expressive poise.

Argento’s settings of entries from Woolf’s diary—which begins with her first writing, “The Diary,” and ends with “Last Entry” from shortly before her suicide—are very different musically, not just in English but with phrases that seem clipped in comparison to Mahler—vignettes by design. The staging had Wagner sit at a writing table, then move about the stage as the piece goes through a kaleidoscope of Woolf’s thoughts, from light-hearted and focused energy to nostalgia and despair. The theatrical element was unobtrusive and effectively concentrated attention on Wagner.

This was a chance for the singer to show what she could do with not just dramatic music, but stage drama, and she was just as fine as in the Mahler songs. The combination of color and lightness in her voice was just right for this music, which is intimate in the senses of totally private thoughts, never meant to be seen, sung out to the public. Her articulation was superb, every word clear, and the agility in her phrasing and ability to switch between moods was excellent, and also felt natural.

That was the one word that summed up Wagner’s performance; she made singing about some of the deepest and most fraught interior moments seem the most natural thing in the world.

Young Concert Artists presents violinist Oliver Neubauer, 7:30 p.m., April 29, in Merkin Concert Hall. yca.org