Renée Fleming and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who have been collaborating since their 2001 recording, Night Songs, joined forces for this largely French-flavored recital. She was fresh-voiced throughout her opening trio of songs by Gabriel Fauré, the most effective of which was ‘Prison’ – a dramatic setting of Paul Verlaine’s poem recalling his own imprisonment for the attempted murder of his lover, Arthur Rimbaud. Unfortunately though, here and elsewhere, her voice was not strong enough for the words to be clearly understood, and without the texts these songs lose their innermost identity and meaning. To be fair, the fault was not entirely the singer’s. With a seating capacity of 2,600, Geffen Hall is a less than perfect place to present anything intimate. Even diction as flawless as Fleming’s has little chance of reaching its midpoint.
However, she settled into the performance of ‘L’Heure exquise’, Reynaldo Hahn’s delicate setting of Verlaine’s depiction of the mystical moment when night falls and everything becomes peaceful, and she was at her most sprightly in ‘The Cuckoo’, Alan Fletcher’s version of a folksong. She was her most emotionally invested in the final set of songs, by Richard Strauss, in particular the somber ‘Ruhe, meine seele’, conveying a wide range of emotions.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet was an attentive partner throughout, but his precision, lyricism, poetic refinement and ability to unveil subtle colors and textures were most evident in two solos. In Debussy’s
La Cathédrale engloutie
he conjured up a vivid portrayal, both aural and visual, of a mythical cathedral rising-up from the waves, with the suggestions of priests chanting, bells chiming and an organ rumbling, and Liszt’s
Consolation
No.3
,
replete with dazzling arpeggios and trills, was completely captivating.
An encore, Jesse Kissell’s arrangement of Leigh Harline & Ned Washington’s ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ of
Pinocchio
film fame, brought the evening to a close.
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Renée Fleming and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who have been collaborating since their 2001 recording, Night Songs, joined forces for this largely French-flavored recital. She was fresh-voiced throughout her opening trio of songs by Gabriel Fauré, the most effective of which was ‘Prison’ – a dramatic setting of Paul Verlaine’s poem recalling his own imprisonment for the attempted murder of his lover, Arthur Rimbaud. Unfortunately though, here and elsewhere, her voice was not strong enough for the words to be clearly understood, and without the texts these songs lose their innermost identity and meaning. To be fair, the fault was not entirely the singer’s. With a seating capacity of 2,600, Geffen Hall is a less than perfect place to present anything intimate. Even diction as flawless as Fleming’s has little chance of reaching its midpoint.
