At Baroque & Wine, Soprano Julia Lezhneva Meets and Exceeds the Hype

Why, oh why, has Julia Lezhneva not been heard in Seattle before? Given this city is such a hotbed of early music performance, this extraordinary soprano could have wowed us much earlier than Friday night at Benaroya Hall. It was a Baroque and Wine concert with a small complement of Seattle Symphony players (most are in the pit for Seattle Opera’s Aida this weekend and next), all of this year’s series directed by Dmitry Sinkovsky, who also plays baroque violin and sings countertenor.

Lezhneva is only 28, a small figure with a big voice, opera-sized, who has become a sensation in Europe and Russia, winning prize after prize and garnering plaudits since she was 12. But what is so special about her singing?

Friday night she sang two Vivaldi and two Handel arias, all of them with fast sections and opportunities for elaborate ornamentation. The moment she opened her mouth in the first Vivaldi aria, “Agitata da due venti” (“Shaken by two winds”), out came this startlingly big voice, warm, effortless, vibrato-less and with ravishing tone quality, in itself something to savor, followed by equally effortless amazingly fast runs perfectly on pitch, with Baroque ornamentation added. Each single note in every run, no matter how fast, was separated from the one before, nothing legato, yet there was expressive shaping and gestures to every bit.

At the end of this first aria there was pandemonium in the hall. It might have been a rock concert, given the enthusiasm of the crowd. And then she sang three more, equally florid, equally flawless in execution. Next came Vivaldi’s “Zeffiretti, che sussurrate” (“Whispering little breezes”) in which Sinkovsky sang an echo in a voice eerily like hers at the same time as conducting and playing his violin in extended solo duets with concertmaster Elisa Barston and continuo cello and harpsichord.

Handel‘s two arias came off equally brilliantly: “Alla sua gabbia d’oro” (“To her gilded cage”) in which one can hear the bird song, and “Brilla nell’alma” (“My soul is trembling”) both from his opera Alessandro.

If there was any quibble, it would be that, until the encore, we didn’t hear Lezhneva in a slow, less-ornamented piece where her beautiful voice could be heard unadorned.

The stunned audience came back after intermission to hear the orchestra in Handel’s Concerto Grosso in G Minor, Op. 6, No. 6, with its third movement having an unexpected deep drone from cellos and basses, simulating the Baroque bagpipe. Lastly came Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D major, “Il grosso mogul” (the grand mogul”), where the slow movement featured Sinkovsky alone, very soft, often very high, with slow continuo cello played, as she had throughout, by Meeka Quan DiLorenzo. Keeping that slow continuo together with Sinkovsky’s acrobatic playing was not particularly easy and she did very well.

It was not a long concert, and Lezhneva and Sinkovsky returned for an encore duet, clearly a love duet although it was not announced.