{"id":3191,"date":"2012-04-20T22:21:40","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T03:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2012-04-20T22:21:40","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T03:21:40","slug":"concert-review-renee-fleming-dazzles-with-serious-art-song-recital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/04\/20\/concert-review-renee-fleming-dazzles-with-serious-art-song-recital\/","title":{"rendered":"Concert review: Ren\u00e9e Fleming dazzles with serious art song recital"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Ren\u00e9e Fleming with accompanist Hartmut H\u00f6ll in Montreal last year (Marco Campanozzi photo for La Presse).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ren\u00e9e Fleming has yet to give the same concert twice in Toronto, despite the fact that she has been a regular visitor for the past two decades — and despite the fact that her fans would be perfectly happy to hear her sing the same handful of opera arias over and over again.<\/p>\n

Such is the American soprano’s charm — and such is her constant quest for something different and challenging.<\/p>\n

Friday night’s recital to a nicely filled Roy Thomson Hall could well have been one of her most challenging yet, delving into the tonally shadowy world of art song in early-20th century Vienna, France and contemporary America.<\/p>\n

In the company of longtime accompanist Hartmut H\u00f6ll as well as a remarkable piano specially brought in for the occasion, Fleming, in fine voice, wove a magical spell from music rarely heard in a venue of this size.<\/p>\n

The first half of the programme was made up of Lieder<\/em> by three composers with tight personal, thematic and compositional connections within the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.<\/p>\n

Inadvertently foreshadowing next week’s opening of his opera, A Florentine Tragedy<\/em>, by the Canadian Opera Company, Fleming began the recital with a set of five songs tracing the outlines in metaphor of a failed relationship by Alexander Zemlinsky.<\/p>\n

Next came two songs by Zemlinsky’s close friend, Arnold Schoenberg, including the early song, Erwartung<\/em> (Anticipation), which floated the allure of desire along on a waft of slippery, lush harmonies.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whole recital, which then veered from the equally lush music of Erich Korngold to the m\u00e9lodies<\/em> of Henri Duparc, turned into a showcase where Fleming could unfurl her magical way with a musical turn of phrase and ability to shade individual vowels in a remarkable range of colours.<\/p>\n

Duparc’s Phidyl\u00e9<\/em> became a model of atmosphere held together by seemingly endless legato singing.<\/p>\n

Here was an artist in full command of her voice as well as the music itself. If, at times, Fleming’s diction faltered a little bit, it at least was done in the service of grace.<\/p>\n

The soprano really tested herself with Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou<\/em>, a mid-1950s set of two songs originally written for baritone by French composer Henri Dutilleux. Despite being fiercely difficult and modern, both Fleming and H\u00f6ll burnished the score into a melancholy magnificence, before crowning the official programme with Night Flight to San Francisco<\/em>, a musical setting by American composer Ricky Ian Gordon inspired by Tony Kushner’s Angels in America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was an emotional peak that left everyone — including Fleming herself, it seemed — wanting more. She obliged with three encores: “Mariettas Lied” from Die tote Stadt<\/em>, by Korngold, “I Feel Pretty,” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story<\/em>, and “Vissi d’arte,” from Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was a perfect, tidy package of a concert, satisfying every possible craving, and displaying every mood.<\/p>\n

H\u00f6ll was the ideal English-butler accompanist — being exactly in the right place, at the right volume, every time.<\/p>\n

The Steingraeber & S\u00f6hne piano also deserves special mention. The expensive, handmade German instrument was much more discreet sounding than the typical concert Steinway, and its tone had a clear, yet dark, quality that was the sonic equivalent of a 25-year-old peaty single-malt Scotch.<\/p>\n

People don’t usually think of matching the sound of a particular piano with the repertoire on a programme, but this coice of instrument turned out to be an inspired complement to some very serious — and very satisfing — musicmaking.<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ren\u00e9e Fleming has yet to give the same concert twice in Toronto, despite the fact that she has been a regular visitor for the past two decades — and despite the fact that her fans would be perfectly happy to hear her sing the same handful of opera arias over and over again. Such is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[76,19,36,43,47,52,56,63,70],"tags":[6450,1528,6468,2769,2804,6471,2881,3071,6474],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/04\/duo1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-Pt","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}