Music : Kiri Te Kanawa at UCLA’s Royce Hall

The particular frustration vented by connoisseurs over Kiri Te Kanawa seems to be based upon unreasonable expectations: that she will suddenly emerge as something she is not, an artist of probing intellect, emotional depth and profound understanding.

As the soprano proved yet again at her Royce Hall, UCLA, recital Saturday night, the rarefied artistry that moves, enlightens and renews is simply not hers to give. This doesn’t mean that what she offers is without value.

Te Kanawa looks and sounds just as radiant as she did at her U.S. debut 20 years ago, which is to say astonishingly so.

She produces consistently an upper-register sound that for roundness, shimmer and gleam can hardly be matched these days. She moves with unassuming ease over the most awkward intervals Handel and Mozart can prescribe, every note scrupulously in the musical line. She applies no harmful pressure to her very weak lower middle voice even when it deserts her. She eschews over-emotive diva tactics.

If Te Kanawa has a clue to the feeling to be mined from Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” or Duparc’s “Phidyle,” her detached delivery bespoke denial; her traversal of Mozart’s “Alleluia” projected less joy than mechanical control; she captured the shallowness of Massenet’s Manon but not her vulnerability; she deployed three “Sitwell” songs of William Walton with splendid insouciance.

The paradoxical, cool warmth of her sound and her unfussy presentation provided rewards not always available from those operating on higher planes of expressivity. Martin Katz was the unfailingly supportive pianist.