Nicholas Phan

Tenors don’t arrive quietly - it’s just not their nature - though Nicholas Phan leaves me wondering why I didn’t know about him sooner. He sang in the Philadelphia Orchestra/Pennsylvania Ballet’s collaboration of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in the spring, but not until his Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital Friday could one take the full measure of his considerable talent, thanks to his passionate commitment to potentially fatal repertoire.

American-trained at the University of Michigan, Phan is singing Purcell and Britten as his calling cards - music that’s so rooted to its British origins that any American attempting to present it to an American audience could be foolhardy. Set to verses of Thomas Hardy, Britten’s Winter Words is homey to the point of being obscure. The more cosmopolitan Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo is daunting for its intensity and density, and once inside the piece, you feel like an emotional voyeur. Both works were recorded by the voice for which they were written - Peter Pears - posing stiff competition to Phan’s excellent, recent Avie-label recording of these works.

In person, however, Phan’s Italianate tint to the typically light, English tenor voice has greater magnetism. The artist behind the voice takes complete possession of the music to a degree that makes comparisons less relevant. Phan has a way of becoming the verse and the character behind it, making good sense out of Britten’s more counterintuitive word settings. Though Winter Words was Phan’s most vocally successful performance of the program at the American Philosophical Society, the Michelangelo cycle was a greater victory.

The words show the late-middle-aged Michelangelo falling desperately in love with a man in his 20s who could never return those feelings. Add Britten’s music and you have a portrait of a fallen god, his anguish vented on a monumental scale, articulated with the insights of age. With the invaluable support of pianist Myra Huang, Phan sustained that high emotional pitch - and the high range of the music - with inevitable vocal strain that accentuated his interpretation. This music should never feel easy.

Among the Purcell songs, Phan chose six little gems, starting with the Shakespeare-inspired “If music be the food of love,” capturing the simple directness that often eludes singers, using peripheral details - trills, coloratura writing - to significantly buttress whatever story the music was telling. And with Phan’s ability to show you the face behind the songs, this 300-year-old music felt new.