Had all gone according to plan three years ago, Chicagoans would have witnessed an unprecedented celestial event at Symphony Center.
We’re not talking astronomy. April 2020 was to be the much-anticipated local appearance of soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Evgeny Kissin, two musical megastars aligning for their first recital tour. In a Sunday matinee copresented by the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera, Fleming and Kissin picked up right where that pandemic-foiled project left off. The only departure from their intended 2020 program is a handful of added Rachmaninoff works, a nod to the composer’s 150th birthday year. (Kissin, one of our great living Rachmaninoff interpreters, was in Chicago as recently as last month to mark the occasion with a solo recital prominently featuring the composer’s music.)
It ended up being an inspired decision, and not just because of the timing. The two Rachmaninoff songs and three solo piano interludes in the recital’s second half asserted themselves as standouts in a largely rewarding, artistically rich program.
Kissin and Fleming presented both versions of “Lilacs” back to back: Rachmaninoff’s famous solo piano transcription, then the early song that inspired it. Turns out the impressionistic, perfumed opus is much more striking in its original form, especially when sung by a soprano with Fleming’s finesse and decadent middle-low register. Her delivery was focused yet rich, economical yet expressive. High notes in her heartstring-tugging performance of Rachmaninoff’s “A Dream” were occasionally hard-won, but boy, were they won.
Kissin tempered “A Dream’s” dense, soloistic piano part to slot under Fleming’s lines without compromising expression or vibrancy. It hinted at what was to come in Kissin’s two solo selections from “Morceaux de fantaisie,” the piano poet taking center stage for an articulate, unspooling “Mélodie” and whirling “Sérénade.”
Liszt was the other composer on the program so lavished with lieder and solo piano selections. However, Kissin and Fleming took to these less consistently on Sunday. Compared with the cogent and transporting “Sposalizio” that preceded it, Kissin’s account of the first “Valse oubliée”— in which Liszt upends the frothy Viennese waltz, much as Ravel would 40 years later in “La valse” — came across as sternly literal rather than fantastical. It wanted for the gloriously referential wit of that Rachmaninoff “Sérénade.”
Likewise, Fleming’s interpretations of the afternoon’s biggest Liszt blockbusters were lovable yet flawed. Fleming sounded a pace or two outside her winning range in lesser-performed early versions of “Oh! Quand je dors” and “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.” Later on, in the second half, uncertain phrasing and balance snafus between voice and piano — of thankfully few overall — grounded what could have been a slam-dunk with “S’il est un charmant gazon.”
But plenty can be forgiven when one starts and ends a performance with sure things — in this case, songs by Schubert and Duparc. Fleming was effervescent and infectiously childlike in a perfectly leggiero “Die Vögel.” The shaded-over, plangent “Mignons Lied” that followed was a miracle of breath control and tone, Fleming’s sustained pitches taking on different colors as if progressing through a spectrum. The two Duparc selections at the program’s end left an outsize impression: an otherworldly, aching “Extase” and almost tragicomic “Le manoir de Rosemonde.”
Rachmaninoff’s birthday glow even extended to the afternoon’s encores. Fleming and Kissin glittered in the composer’s effusive (and nicely seasonal) “Spring Waters,” which, for once — and maybe just this once — outshone Fleming’s Strauss: his haunting, hopeful “Morgen.”
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Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The baiduhai maintains editorial control over assignments and content.