No matter how stylishly a classical artist may sing pop or musical theater songs, every sustained note is invariably served up with the same, patented “legit” vibrato and a crescendo. This means that unimportant words will be stressed, or else accented on the wrong syllable. Instead of “I got RHY-thm,” for instance, Sylvia McNair sings “I got rhy-THM”. Notes are usually hit square on, with no bending or decorating. I wish McNair would inflect the last line of “For You, For Me, For Evermore” with that very upward slide she coyly suppresses; or for real, instead of sort of, phrasing behind the beat in “My Ship” or “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”. Now that I’ve nit-picked my way through this live all-Gershwin recital aired by BBC Radio 3 from London’s Wigmore Hall, let me say that each selection reveals the singer’s genuine empathy for the idiom. It’s a nicely-put-together program. Familiar fare such as “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “The Man I Love” gets interspersed with lesser-known gems like “Just Another Rhumba” and “Stiff Upper Lip”. The latter shares a medley setting with “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”. Harmonically speaking, Ted Taylor’s richly textured accompaniments are not so interesting when compared to what André Previn, Richard Rodney Bennett, or Dick Hyman might concoct. But cute touches abound. I like, for example, how Taylor begins the famous Prelude No. 2, while McNair enters with “Summertime” on the second chorus. For an encore, McNair sings Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Hello Young Lovers”, leaving her lunchtime audience happy and, presumably, well fed.
