We were not expecting Nina Stemme to open her recital with an Elgar song cycle. Yet this illustrious Wagnerian soprano chose Sea Pictures, Op. 37, a rarity for the composer and a surprising departure from the Stemme repertoire.

Associated with music for large orchestras and choruses and composed following his breakthrough Enigma Variations, Elgar’s works are more suited to the celebratory atmosphere of the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall than to recital at Carnegie Hall. But there was Stemme, on stage with her esteemed accompanist Roland Pöntinen at a grand Steinway.

Stemme brought impressive range to this 1899 composition, capturing the roiling atmosphere and, perhaps irresistible to the composer, his occasional monumental and heroic themes. The cycle has its delicate moments too as in “Where Corals Lie”, an underwater adventure with enchanting verse by Richard Garnett that Stemme handled with dignified charm.

Foregoing flourishing gestures and with almost imperceptible body language, it is worth mentioning that Stemme is, at no expense to her expressiveness, a meticulous and efficient recitalist. She reveled in the languid calmness of the opening “Sea Slumber Song”, which gave seamless introduction to “In Haven”. Set to the poetry of Elgar’s wife Alice, herself a published novelist, the song evokes the turbulent sea. It is a simple and affecting composition with sustained notes at the end suggesting strength and stability while Alice Elgar’s words speak of enduring love.

We would be leaving the sea for a Weimar era cabaret. It was a thunderous departure launched by Elgar’s finale, “The Swimmer”, in which the soprano soared with confident high notes, firmly in command of its triumphant finish.

After a momentary pause, Stemme returned to the stage positioning herself closer to the piano and tilting her head toward Pöntinen — cabaret indeed. Opening with the Weill-Bertolt Brecht classic, “Surabaya Johnny”, was a bold move. Singing not just to the wayward Johnny or unloading Brecht’s lyrics of anger and desperation, Stemme seemed to be channeling an inner voice, one so hauntingly pervasive that it may have already devoured her character.

“Nanna’s Song”, another Weill-Brecht number, tells the first- person story of a teen-age prostitute. It’s fraught with irony as Nanna finds gloomy optimism in the possibility of her eventual extinction. Stemme’s rendition is at moments wistful, even sweet but in the end irrevocably sad. The soprano’s minimalist approach to both Weill-Brecht songs created beautifully, if fretfully, nuanced characters.

A bit of lift followed with Weill’s “I Don’t Love You”, a melancholy fox trot set to French verse by Maurice Magre, a lament from an abandoned women who had an affair with a bisexual man. Here Stemme acquires a subtly brazen tone, affecting the hauteur of a jaded cabaret artist. The attitude carried over into “Youkali”, Weill’s spicy song set to a tango-habanera rhythm about a tropical island where all human desires are fulfilled. In Stemme’s hands we weren’t surprised to learn that the island was only a fantasy.

Stemme emerged after intermission in a subdued gown and a diaphanous black shawl. Clearly the cabaret was over and Stemme was entering into Wagner’s netherworld, with aspects of his Wesendonck Lieder and Liszt’s piano-voice transcription of the “Liebestod” from Tristan and Isolde.

If Stemme employed a certain reserve in approaching the Wesendonck Lieder to this ear it was a shrewd move. Wagner composed the songs for his (perhaps) platonic lover Mathilde, the wife of his patron Otto Wesendonck. Leaving the romantic entanglement aside, whatever its status, Mathilde produced ardent verse that was prone to excess. Still her modest gifts met Wagner’s needs and he set them to music. With “Im Trebhaus”, and “Der Träume”, Wagner found inspiration for Tristan and Isolde. Mining the music for emotional heft, Stemme did not stoke the verse with additional ammunition. In “Schmerzen”, he transforms Mrs. Wesendonck’s maudlin imagery into heroic triumph and Stemme reveals the Wagnerian soprano who had earlier been so captivating in the embrace of Elgar and Weill.

An etherial layer of silence seemed to engulf the already quiet auditorium. Perhaps it was a collectively held breath at the sounds of the distant and desolate notes of the Liszt-transcribed Liebestod. Such is the magic of a soprano who can conjure Isolde’s hallucinatory and surreal musing with emotional conviction. It is perhaps the most complicated and woeful moment in song. Yet Stemme and Pöntinen found clarity in the fog and guided us to its stunning conclusion.