Janet Wheeler, soprano

Those who defied snow and reading lists to attend Sunday's concert found an afternoon of enjoyable though not flawless singing. In selections ranging from Handel to Norman Shapiro, Janct Wheeler revealed a voice of power and often great beauty.

The soprano was at her best in modern selections, especially in the Air de Lia. Taken from Debussy's carly cantata L'Enfant Prodigue (for which he won the Prix de Rome), this aria is one of the most taxing in the repertoire. Miss Wheeler managed its wide range with case and made believable, even in a concert setting, the portrait of a bereaved mother's grief.

It was only partly the singer's fault that three songs of Faure did not come off quite so well. Set to poems by de Lisle, Silvestre, and Verlaine, they typify that bittersweet, almost perfumed school of French music on the border of out-and-out Impressionism. Utmost delicacy and nuance are needed to convince the listener that "jets of slender fountains sob with ecstasy." Samuel Walter's piano accompaniment, although accurate, completely neglected the musical imagery. Miss Wheeler, for her part, lacks the technique of "French" projection--a sharply defined, almost nasal quality--that the vocal lines demand. She was more than equal to big emotional climaxes, but not to evocations of moonlight and mist.

Six lieder of Brahms showed what an energetic performance can do for songs that are sometimes the deadliest bores of a concert program. Miss Wheeler did not explore the expressive sound of German words as much as she might have, but she colored her voice effectively with the changing moods of the text. In arias by Handel and Mozart, as well as in the Brahms songs, she seemed most comfortable in the middle range.

Besides two Ogden Nash bonbons set to music by Norman Shapiro '51, Miss Wheeler's contemporary offerings included a pair of songs by Theodore Chanler. One of these, The Doves, is a poem by Leonard J. Feeney, a well-known Cambridge figure. It begins:

The doves, they fly to the moonlit clms and cry

Tick-i-ta-coo, tick-i-ta-coo

The whole night through