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Wearing a beautiful, long red gown and a white translucent shawl, Renée Fleming received a lengthy applause as soon as she took the stage at Folly Theater for Saturday evening’s sold-out appearance. She spoke briefly before beginning her program, taking up a microphone tucked away inside the piano. “No, I’m not going to sing anything from Dark Hope,” she quipped to laughter, referring to her latest recording, a foray into contemporary pop covers. Instead, Fleming explained, she was about to take the audience on a musical journey through a rich period of Vienna’s history via tonight’s selection of composers and repertoire.

Indeed, the opera star had prepared a sophisticated and nuanced program for Saturday evening’s Kansas City audience. The first of four selections from Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!” (“I breathed a gentle scent!”) was a surprisingly intimate offering. Defying expectations of the kind of singing one would expect to hear from one of the world’s most powerful operatic soprano voices, this was incredibly delicate, placid singing. A quiet, yet beautiful tone delivered Rückert’s text about the gentle scent of a linden branch. Here too, Mahler’s familiar orchestral texture was reduced to lightly-pedaled piano courtesy of recital partner Bradley Moore. Unhurried, Fleming and Moore glided though the rest of the Mahler selections. The third song, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” (“I am lost to the world”) was perhaps the most striking. The text’s first appearance of the word “gestorben” (dead) received a passionate and unexpected crescendo. The singer had mentioned the deaths of Mahler’s daughter and wife in her introduction and was deftly connecting this personal loss with Rückert’s poetry in her interpretation.

Following the Mahler selections, the program quickly shifted focus to several of his lesser-known contemporaries, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, and Korngold. Fleming again spoke of the personal connections between composers and their music, noting that Zemlinsky’s sister and Schoeberg’s first wife, Matilde, had briefly left Schoenberg for painter Richard Gerstl. She thought this personal story pertinent to the somber music she was performing, explaining Gerstl’s subsequent suicide had profound effects on all involved. Her performance of Zemlinsky’s “Ansturm” (“Onslaught”) from Fünf Lieder, particularly, achieved palpable angst.

Curiously sandwiched between the Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, were four selections from poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God in settings composed for Fleming by living jazz pianist, Brad Mehldau. Of their collaboration on the project Fleming explained, “I listen to him all the time. I’m his biggest fan.” She continued that she had reservations about Mehldau’s wish to create the settings of Rilke. “I tried to talk him out of it,” she said, reminding Mehldau of the dozens of existing settings. “Do you really want to compete with that?” she asked. She delivered Mehldau’s cheeky response of “Yes” to laughs from the audience.

I was quite impressed with these pieces, as well as with Fleming’s championing of a living composer. Some sort of nebulous classical-jazz, this was not. These were serious twentieth-century art-songs written in a lush, highly chromatic language. From the piano, Moore brought out the deep bass octaves which underpinned complex, kaleidoscopic harmonies. Mehldau’s prosody of the text was beautiful and adept, several moments bringing to mind the more complex art songs of Ned Rorem. In the second selection, “No one lives his life,” a soulful rock groove emerged, which Fleming noted made her think of 80’s rock. The rhythmic groove felt omnipresent throughout the song, but was skillfully allowed to disappear altogether at times. The last of the set, “Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you,” began with what sounded like a dark, deconstructed Tori Amos piano ballad. The vocal line in this selection allowed Fleming to linger on a couple of tastefully placed "blue" notes. Throughout these selections, there was a great deal of transformation and variety with very little repetition. I was enamored with several stretches of beautiful, yet very fleeting melodies.

Reappearing after intermission in a purple gown with black brocade and matching black shawl, Fleming completed her musical journey through Vienna with Schoenberg’s Jane Grey, Op. 12, No. 1 and three selections from Korngold. Moore seemed to step out into the spotlight a bit more in the Schoenberg, visibly enjoying his piano interlude. The last of the Korngold set, “Was du mir bist?” (“What are you to me?”) Op. 22, No. 1, effectively captured the sentiment of Eleonore van der Straaten’s poetry. Here, Fleming returned to the demure interpretation she exhibited in the Mahler. Finely displaying her signature, virtuosic breath-support, she created an impossibly-long phrase on the second occurrence of the text “Was du mir bist?” (“What are you to me?”).

Following the Korngold, Fleming opened a series of Italian-language selections with the aria, “Donde lieta uscì,” from Puccini’s La bohème, before launching into a series of more obscure selections from Leoncavallo, Giordano, and Zandonai. It was in the two character sketch-like arias of Leoncavallo’s La bohème that Fleming finally allowed her voice to enliven the Italian text, lilting a bit more. Giordano’s “Troppo tardi! Tutto tramonta, tutto dilegua” (“Too late! All is fading, all is disappearing”) from Fedora abruptly left the Bohemian cheer of Leoncavallo, exhibiting instead a completely different vocal color full of darkness, fear, and despair. Zandonai’s “Ier dalla fabbrica a Triana” (“Yesterday three fine gentlemen”) from Conchita returned to lighter themes, of which the singer said laughing, “I once tried to tell the [opera’s] story during a performance and got embarrassed. If you really want to know, go online and Google it. It’s all about cigars and... Nevermind.”

After a full recital of nuanced repertoire and some understated interpretations, Fleming returned to the stage for five encores singing some of the more popular repertoire that brought her fame. “O mio babbino caro,” a Strauss aria, “The Song to the Moon” from Rusalka, and two numbers from West Side Story, “I feel pretty” and “Somewhere,” finished out the evening.

In the end, the Kansas City audience was treated to a somewhat contemplative yet highly enjoyable recital. Fleming had asked the audience to watch, listen, read the texts of the songs, experience, and contemplate what she considered these amazing works of art. Leaving the theater, I overheard numerous conversations of concert-goers, actively discussing what they had experienced. I think, then, Ms. Fleming achieved her goal of getting us to talk about music.

REVIEW:
Harriman-Jewell Series Presents Renée Fleming, Soprano, in Recital
Saturday October 9 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
300 W 12th St, Kansas City, MO
For more information about this and other performances in the 2010–11 series, visit http://hjseries.org

Photos by Andrew Eccles for Decca

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.