Fleming's recent London disc, Grammy-nominated last week, is properly titled The Beautiful Voice, but "beautiful" doesn't say it all. What I found most astounding about her recital here was the range of her insights, her uncanny ability to find the exact emotional shading for a key moment -- the unhinging of Gretchen's reason on the word Kussas she spins out her memories in Schubert's marvelous song, the slinky insinuations in Duke Ellington's "Do Nuthin' Till You Hear From Me," the woodland mists around a bit of Verlaine's poetic imagery as conjured in a Debussy song, the whipped-cream and bratwurst in a Richard Strauss banality.
Along with Schubert's sublime reactions to Goethe's poetry, Fleming let us smile forgivingly at the same texts set by lesser hands: Glinka's "Gretchen" and Mendelssohn's "Suleika." Throughout the evening she insisted that her pianist, Helen Yorke, share the stage bows out front, rather than the usual mousy nod from the piano bench -- an awareness, seldom encountered, of the partnership that the magical repertory of the art song truly entails.
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