A Recital with Renée Fleming - Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century. Renée Fleming, accompanied by pianist Maciej Pikulski, gives in 2012 a recital at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. The recital includes works by Wolf, Mahler, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, and Korngold. Directed for TV by Brian Large. Released 2014, disc has 5.0 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Eric Meyers, writing in the February 2015 Opera News (page 59) notes that English is Fleming’s mother language and admires her courage in giving this concert of mostly German-language songs to the toughest audience on the planet for such material. He notes that Fleming's voice is no longer as powerful as before (in the opera house) and "now makes her better suited to intimate evenings such as this one." David Patrick Sterns, writing in the 2014 December Gramophone (page 93-94) is more critical. He thinks her "voice and face sometimes tell different stories" and that in some cases her "visual presentation is so overwrought that she's ripe for intervention from Overactresses Anonymous."
Whom to believe? I would be inclined to take a chance on this: I understand Fleming’s German diction is very good for someone whose mother language is English. And she has been successful singing in many Richard Strauss operas, all in German. So I think she has the credentials to preach sermons to the choir in Vienna.
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