Meanwhile, she needs to choose her recital songs with great care. Purcell is not the best composer for her, for example. Even with John Parr's evocative piano utterances to support her, the rapidly changing passages and moods of both “Sweeter than Roses” and “The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation” were beyond the young singer's vocal compass. To compensate for clean passagework, she gave too much voice, letting an excited (and potentially exciting) vibrato stand in for a firmly guided instrument. The role of the motherly Virgin, her anxiety over her son's wandering, are not beyond the singer's scope, as was clear from her forceful stage presence and keen musical understanding. But she needs to bring her exuberant voice under the command of her musical intention. Her voice must do her intelligence's bidding.

In a group of French songs, the most successful was Fleur jetée (Flung flower), by Fauré, because its heartache and grief allowed the singer to sing without restraint. Debussy's De fleurs (Of flowers) was beautifully built and executed, and contained two lines that were genuinely expressed: “Mon âme meurt de trop de soleil” ( My soul is dying from too much sun), and an echoing line, “Mes yeux sont las de pleurer” (My eyes are weary of weeping). But the langorous Extase (Ecstasy) by Duparc sounded too full of vitality in van den Heever's delivery; and Le spectre de la rose (The ghost of the rose) needed a more thoughtful performance, with just a hint of the other-worldly.

Of her chosen songs, those best suited to the singer, perhaps, were Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder (Seven Early Songs). She seemed comfortable with the German language and the style, though she doesn't yet have the sense of line that would allow for a gorgeous outpouring of tone in “Weites Wunderland ist aufgetan” (A vast wonderland opens up). And in the exquisite song “Die Nachtigall” (The Nightingale), the long, slow-growing arc of the nightingale's sweet, piercing, nightlong song culminates in “Die Rosen aufgesprungen” (The roses burst open), a phrase that is loud not because it is vociferous but because it is ecstatic. The dynamic marking “forte” does not always mean the same quality or degree of “loud.” Too often, though, in van den Heever's performance it meant just that.

Brahms' “Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer” (Ever lighter grows my slumber), was not light enough to depict the dying person's feverish sleep, nor was it rapid enough to impart the febrile agitation at the possibility of not seeing the beloved once more. “Von ewiger Liebe” (Of Eternal Love) has three voices: the narrator's, the boy's, and the girl's. The narrator sets the scene and arouses the interest of the listener. The young man is self-doubting, anguished, overwrought. The young woman is confident, reassuring, femininely strong. Van den Heever chose a sort of all-purpose outburst for the boy and tried for a smiling, almost simpering quality for the girl. Both fell well short of what could have been realized in Brahms' powerful song.

The final piece, the six songs of Sir William Walton's A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table, was too ambitious for the singer and didn't suit her, though she handled it intelligently. The question was, why should she do it at all? She lacked the vocal variety for its many flavors, and once again her vibrato obscured any well-modulated dynamic variation there might have been and stood surrogate for sinuous line, arch turn of phrase — in other words, the complete artist's array of devices. With this array at her command, van den Heever will ultimately be as formidable as she is presently, to judge from the demonstrative audience, beloved.