A Vancouver Recital Society presentation. At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Thursday, May 6

The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is taking the world by storm and he recently got a rave from the New Yorker. That was no surprise to those who’ve heard him sing here before. He returned to the Chan Centre for the Vancouver Recital Society with an unforgettable program that began with an entire first half devoted to Robert Schumann.

Schumann’s connection to song was greatly influenced by his youthful literary background. This, plus the fact that his original plans were to be a pianist and not a composer, made him almost unparalleled at word-setting. He was extraordinarily generous to the piano and had the gift of containing a world of emotion within just a few bars.

Finley’s 10 selections concentrated on the year 1840, at the end of which Clara Wieck became Schumann’s wife. It was an astonishingly productive year of songwriting, and many of the German composer’s lyrical outpourings have an irresistible combination of warmth and impulsiveness. His greatest collaboration was with the poet Heinrich Heine, whose terseness Schumann countered with music of expansive expression—more proof that there is a powerful dynamic in the play of opposites.

Urgency and a transfixing ardour gripped Finley but never shook him off-pitch in what was a captivating recital with tonal fullness from the bottom to the top. His word colouring and suspenseful mezza-voce shadings were extraordinary, giving the long narrative song called “Belsazar” the eerie fascination of a campfire tale.

But I was especially taken with his delicious performance of Maurice Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles, immensely witty philosophizing on text by Jules Renard, his diction, colouring, timing, and tonal nuancing absolutely on point.

The last set was in English: four songs by the American Samuel Barber and four by the great American original, Charles Ives, an insurance salesman who wrote music in his spare time and also independently anticipated revolutionary techniques before most Europeans had any idea. Only one choice was radical—Ives’s “Charlie Rutledge”—and it was thrilling, with real Yankee dialect.

A big mention for Finley’s pianist, Julius Drake, who’s accompanied many great singers including Olaf Bí¤r and Ian Bostridge. In fact the word “accompanist” doesn’t begin to describe it. He had as much to do with the effect of this recital as Finley did.