By Steven Wine
“Find your strength in love,” Whitney Houston sings near the end of a new live album, “The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban).” She spends a full minute delivering those five syllables.
The song is “Greatest Love of All.” At the start of the final line, Houston darts from note to note. On the word “strength,” her amazing alto blooms, climbs and adds vibrato. When she reaches the word “love,” she playfully skips through several notes and lets the last one linger, the power of its beauty matching the message.
Houston was some singer, and that’s reaffirmed by “The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban).” Sadly, the album also shows how the pop diva’s incomparable talent was misspent before she died in 2012 at the age of 48.
The album will be out Friday, following the limited theatrical release of a film commemorating the 30th anniversary of Houston’s three 1994 concerts in
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