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Jonathan Lemalu is back in the country and pleased to be home. "While overseas people often single out New Zealand as a beautiful place above everything else, I don't immediately think of beautiful places when I think of New Zealand," he says. "I think of home because that
is what it is."
On previous visits, the bass-baritone has appeared with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. This time we have him in recital, paired with distinguished English pianist Malcolm Martineau.
The recital situation appeals, Lemalu says. "There's the subtlety and the sensitivity that can be created when you are, in a sense, standing there naked, without costumes, lights or props.
"There's a purity to it, in an almost primal kind of way, that makes it so challenging."
Recitals were rare when Lemalu was a student in Dunedin, but once in London he was bewitched by Sarah Walker and Roger Vignoles performing at the Wigmore Hall on the last night of the old millennium.
"I was absolutely spellbound by the sheer emotional journey of it all, the theatrics and the passion. It was awe-inspiring.
"I so admire Sarah Walker for the way that she walks that tightrope between what is safe and what is pushing the boundaries - that's something I'd like to think I have learned from her."
The risk factor can be an asset, it would seem. "Safety is a good thing at times, but pushing that envelope and not knowing whether it might or mightn't work is what live performance is all about."
Another singer who touched him deeply was Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau. "Even without speaking fluent German, I felt I understood what he was singing."
Lemalu says it's a rare gift for someone of that ilk to be able to touch the emotions of "a boy from Dunedin".
"It's about giving the song away and letting everybody have that enjoyment."
One of Lemalu's chief enjoyments here is working with the marvellous Martineau, who is also a perfect touring companion.
"Malcolm deals with pressure so calmly that I feel I am being paid to go on a masterclass tour with him and that is special. He has the rare ability to love the music while he's on stage and love life when he's off stage."
Martineau's experience and artistry is particularly welcome in the Schumann Dichterliebe song-cycle which is the centrepiece of Saturday's concert.
"Part of the beauty of this work is in listening to the atmosphere that's being set up for me," Lemalu says. "The piano really is an equal partner and as so many of the play-outs carry so much of the message and the singer really listens to them, they will naturally set you up for the next song."
Lemalu says that when Martineau stands in for an orchestra in arias from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin or Verdi's Falstaff, amazing sounds are drummed up. "Sometimes I feel I could turn around to find a 60-piece orchestra had somehow snuck up on stage."
There might even be a few minutes of controversy on Saturday with Richard Rodney Bennett's Songs before Sleep, written for Lemalu and performed by him at the composer's 70th birthday concert last year.
One song, Baby, baby, naughty baby, a setting of a traditional rhyme, has a child threatened with violence that goes well beyond smacking.
"When I first sang them to Bennett he laughed," Lemalu says. "He said he knew I was going to be too nice for this song. He wanted me to feel like I'm at the end of my tether with this child and, if I wasn't feeling uncomfortable, then I was doing it wrong."
On the Chandos CD the Bennett songs have a full orchestra behind them, but Lemalu says that with piano they still pack a punch. "Malcolm and I both get cheeky little chances to push our own boundaries in ways that just wouldn't come up in a recording studio."
