Soile Isokoski first sang in Cardiff as a Singer of the World finalist in 1987. This recital, to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in the lead-up to this year's competition, underlined her status as one of the most accomplished sopranos of her generation. She opened her programme with songs by Glück and Alessandro Scarlatti, and the clarity and grace of her delivery were apparent from the outset.
Isokoski is anything but flamboyant on stage; everything in her armoury is made to serve the music, the sound not massive but often magical. Even so, the following four Schubert songs were oddly subdued. The different colours she brought to the imploring, anguished lines were deeply expressive, but by the end of Scott's Ave Maria, the mood was almost unbearably poignant.
There was more heart-wrenching stuff to come in the four songs by Sibelius. Yet here, singing in her native Finnish, Isokoski was visibly more relaxed and outgoing, the tone warmer. Each song was a miniature epic, its atmosphere and landscape vividly depicted. None was more compelling than Kaiutar (The Echo-Nymph), in which a maiden abandoned on cold moorland by her lover takes revenge by leading travellers astray.
The Four Dream Songs of Aulis Sallinen were natural partners to the Sibelius. They inhabit the same misty, mystical world, yet their sometimes dissonant clamour and surges of emotion embody a more passionate force.
Bernstein's song cycle, I Hate Music, neatly diffused all that tension and drama, with Isokoski showing her more playful side in a witty characterisation of a perceptive 10-year old - a sort of Pippi Longstocking goes to Sesame Street.
Isokoski's recent recording of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs won her a 2002 Gramophone award. Here, it was four Strauss songs that found her in most radiant voice, with seemingly effortless control of the gently arching phrases. Her partnership with pianist Marita Viitasalo is one of sympathy and understanding: their final Ständchen was a delicately rippling affair, wonderfully lyrical without a trace of self-indulgence. This was real artistry.
