I’ve attended many very good concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre but I’m not sure I’ve ever attended one as intense as Tracy Dahl and Liz Upchurch’s Songs from the Heart recital today.  Tracy really is a rather extraordinary artist.  She is the antithesis of the lieder singer who stands demurely by the piano and Schuberts mellifluously.  She throws every fibre of her being into the performance.  It’s not campily histrionic but voice, facial expression and gesture are all used to the full whether she’s  hiccupping a drunken Harlequin or sibilantly suggesting a slithery singing snake.

It was a very varied programme starting off with Purcell and Debussy, including a very nicely characterised Quatre chansons de jeunesse.  In the second half we got, a bit unexpectedly, some very sweetly sung Strauss songs and then an unprogrammed extra, Strauss’ Amor recalling Tracy’s Zerbinetta days.  She hasn’t lost any of the vocal agility.  The final set featured two “weepies”; Burn’s My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose in the John Greer arrangement (which Tracy couldn’t quite finish for emotion.  What the heck, I was crying too) and Greer’s setting of Marianne Bindig’s My Mother’s Hands followed by the broadly comic The Serpent to music by Lee Hoilby.

An encore was inevitable but I suspect few of us expected Bob Dylan.  We got a beautiful version of Forever Young in the John Corigliano setting.  So a fitting end to a really memorable performance from Tracy with Liz Upchurch, once again, demonstrating her exceptional talent as a collaborative pianist.

Photo Credit: Kevin Clark