The Chinese bass baritone Le Bu has collected some neat glittering prizes lately, including a Grand Finale win at the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition and a first prize at Operalia. What’s more, his deep-burgundy timbre and high seriousness is even generating hopeful buzz among collectors of antique vinyl whose tolerance for today’s instant wonders hovers close to zero. His song list for Vocal Arts DC—in four languages—bespeaks his ambition not just as a performer but as an artist. A mythologically oriented Schubert group culminates in the Dantean “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus.” A French group builds to Duparc’s tremendous “La Vague et la cloche,” which strikes the ear like Delacroix in sound. Excerpts from the Vaughan William cycle The House of Life (set to sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti) touch gentler, more spiritual yearnings. Selections from Mussorgsky’s harrowing Songs and Dances of Death, close the official program. (Is something Chinese up his sleeve for an encore?) Le Bu’s partner at the keyboard is the Tashkent native and Mannes School of Music graduate Artyom Pak. —Matthew Gurewitsch