Aspen – Renée the Divine.
That seems the only appropriate title for renowned soprano Renée Fleming, who delivered an evening of singing Thursday evening at the Aspen Music Festival that was nothing short of transcendent.
Any recital by the vocalist is highly anticipated, but this one was especially so, because it was her first appearance in 13 years at the festival, where she spent four summers as a student.
Expectations were running high, and Fleming skyrocketed beyond them. Put simply, this was a great concert by one of classical music’s greatest living artists.
The soprano could have easily have played it safe, but, instead, she took on an extraordinarily ambitious program, traversing three centuries, four languages and nine composers.
By the time she arrived at the familiar repertoire on the second half, she had already covered some amazingly diverse musical terrain, beginning with three late 17th-century songs by Henry Purcell, handsomely accompanied by a baroque trio.
The first, “Sweeter Than Roses,” set the tone for the rest of the evening, with Fleming so evocatively capitalizing on Purcell’s every phrase that the audience could feel the cool evening breeze and touch of a first kiss that the song so vividly depicts.
After four arias from oratorios by George Frideric Handel, she offered a somber, deeply moving version of George Crumb’s elegiac “Apparition,” capturing the ghostly quality and emotional complexity of this 1979 setting of a poem by Walt Whitman.
Much of this piece requires the pianist to play the instrument in unusual ways, plucking and tapping the strings. Pianist Richard Bado, who showed himself to be a collaborator of the first order all evening, handled the unorthodoxy with virtuosic ease.
There was not a weak moment to be heard on this program. It was just one “Wow!” after another, from Fleming’s shimmering version of George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” one of three encores, to her soaring, deftly ornamented opening to Handel’s “O Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?”
With singing that was supple, natural, even ethereal at times, Fleming’s homecoming was a triumph in every way.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
