“So, this recital is a bit of a trip down memory lane,” says the Grammy and Gramophone Award winning Bass-Baritone standing by the piano in the Stern Auditorium. Has the Perelman Stage ever looked so cosy? Has Carnegie Hall’s cavernous main space ever felt more homely than when it’s Sir Bryn Terfel who’s making it home for the evening?

Opening with a Finzi song cycle he first learned when at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, there is an ease in Sir Bryn’s relationship with tonight’s repertoire. Having entered Guildhall in 1984, he’s been friends with some of this music for nearly 40 years and it shows. Though a meditation on death, ‘Come Away’ is something of an invocation for the audience to come with him on this wistful trip and by the time that ‘O mistress mine’ is in full flow, we are well and truly bobbing along with the jaunty melodies spun up by Bryn and the dexterous piano line of Annabel Thwaite.

After a harp interlude by Hannah Stone, Bryn returns to embark on a set of theatrical Ivor Novello pieces. ‘I can give you the starlight’ is delivered in the gruff, funny, friendly register that has made his voice popular the world over. There is also a bittersweetness to some of tonight’s program: a sense of ‘what might have been’. “Aww, Harry…” he remarks after ‘Ar Lan y Môr’, a gorgeous traditional that might have been part of Harry and Meghan’s wedding had the Prince’s tastes been more refined Welsh. So too is there comedic regret couching Claude-Michel Schönberg’s ‘Stars’ from Les Misérables (Javert’s song, a role that Russell Crowe of course pinched from our resonant hero). That said, the only regret in ‘And her mother came too’ is that it ends too soon — a beautiful moment of light relief that also showcases the twinkle in our host’s eye.

Only a few blocks away from Broadway, it is of course fitting that there’s some showbiz on the menu tonight. There’s some belting, there’s a couple of encores, there’s the very star power of Sir Bryn. That said, it is in moments of intimacy that Terfel’s soft power comes most clearly to bear. ‘Ar Hyd y Nos’ is pensive, sparing, warm. With left hand crossed onto his right forearm, the powerful figure turns gently towards the harp, making the big old hall once more small, kindly and familiar. There surely cannot be a better ambassador for this thoroughly Welsh appreciation for an operatic banger, an ear for a tune, an appetite for song.

Photo credit: Steve J. Sherman. To explore Carnegie Hall’s vocal season go here: carnegiehall.org/vocal