A little night music from two internationally famous
soloists. There is no reason why they should automatically hit it off,
but they do, and the results are spectacular. Fleming and Thibaudet
make a fantastic, and entirely natural partnership. For a start they
both have a bit of showbiz about them; a more immaculately dressed couple
of musicians would be hard to imagine. But they are both extremely gifted
- technically and musically – and furthermore, their gifts and concerns
dovetail to make a convincing whole. Both are interested in the infinite
little shadings, the colours that make songs so beautiful, and neither
are afraid to strain for the extreme that makes them interesting.
Thibaudet is a fantastic accompanist, or collaborator
as Fleming more accurately calls him. He has worked with top quality
singers before – recordings with Bartolli and Fassbaender – and understands
the art of songs perfectly. His voicing is immaculate, and his sense
of balance, both within the piano writing and with the singer is excellent
Fleming is at the height of her powers, an artist whose interpretations
Strauss are pre-eminent amongst current singers. His music is represented
here, almost a calling card, but she has indulged her Francophile tendencies,
and also her musicological ones, including some lesser known works by
Marx and Rachmaninov.
Indeed, the most enjoyable of the many fine aspects
to this disc is that in its beautifully varied selection it captures
so many aspects of the night : the tired, the erotic, the warm, the
cold, the long, the short. Some are obvious choices, like Fauré’s
Clair de Lune, some inspired, like the Marx selection and some tenuous,
like the Chansons de Bilitis, but they all combine to make a most beautifully
varied dish.
Although the technical performances are stunning, the
French songs that open this album seem to me the least successful, although
these things are relative. They are a little robust for my cliché-ridden
taste, perhaps a little over-wrought at the climax, and her Debussy,
whilst admirably free of mist or vagueness, is a little too direct.
Everything else is pure gold however. The Strauss lieder
are every bit as good as you imagined they would be. The Rachmaninov
songs are deliciously dark. My favourite of all are the four Marx songs.
They are well worth discovering, introverted and delicate music of real
yearning. The performances are gorgeous, the two musicians in complete
sympathy with each other and the music, alternately soaring convincingly
and whispering tenderly. Gorgeous.
Aidan Twomey
In complete contrast is the review from Jonathan
Woolf. This is only the second critical review of this recording I have
seen, the other was by David Vernier on Classic Today, although Stephin
Pruslin was equivocal in IRR and several correspondents on rec.music.clasical.recordings
were venting spleen. It is interesting that this disc was released later
in the UK than anywhere else - did Decca suspect something?. We welcome
your comments via the feedback bulletin board (link below) - LM
This recital promises much: crepuscular and night shrouded
songs by the two greatest French song composers, by Strauss and his
younger German contemporary, the still undervalued Joseph Marx and finishing
with six of Rachmaninov’s equally underplayed songs. Fleming herself
is one of the admired of singers and in Thibaudet she has an accompanist
quite capable of harnessing his soloistic impulses in the interests
of real artistic collaboration. And yet what a disappointment it is.
There is a fatal lack of differentiation, a sameness of approach that
I found increasingly worrying and wearying. There is seldom less than
technical finesse but equally seldom more than the mere elucidation
of text and music and sometimes not even that.
Fleming’s French is frequently unidiomatic – Thibaudet
might have saved her from some of her more serious problems – but more
than that is her low level of engagement with the music and its dramatic
and lyrical life. Mandoline, in Fauré’s setting, lacks
animation, Après un rêve skates rudely over the
surface replete with what I hesitate but have to call a fake expressivity
(at 2’30) that is as perplexing as it is limiting. For all her beautiful
breath control, for all Thibaudet’s assurance, these are performances
of Fauré singing quite impossible to bear any kind of comparison
with, say, Elly Ameling or Frederica von Stade.
Yes, Thibaudet’s rippling and rubato-rich playing of
Debussy’s Mandoline is fine. Yes, there is real animation in
the singing here and Fleming’s lower voice is excellently equalized
and under firm control but why the operatic flourishes in Apparition,
pushing the voice so hard and uningratiatingly? And the Marx songs,
whilst more than welcome, equally nowhere operate on a sustained level
of involvement. The selections – whether impressionistic or animated
– receive rather monochrome performances. I sensed that it was only
with the Strauss that Fleming mined a deeper vein of subtlety. If her
singing here does still seem a mite generic in its response it does
also seem rather more complexly alive to text and music than anywhere
else on the disc - in Ruhe, meine Seele! for example or Schlechtes
Wetter where she is never overbearing or unsubtle. In Rachmaninov’s
Zdes khorosho – a most beautiful song – her softened tone, with
unforced ease, is a pleasure to hear whereas Son seems to me
fluttery and sentimentalised as in Eti letniye nochi she sacrifices
tone to force her voice to no discernible musico-dramatic advantage.
All very disappointing.
Jonathan Woolf
Renée Fleming,
soprano