Doing It Their Way - Sound Recording Review

National Review, Nov 25, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

It's a big issue in the opera world: Renee Fleming's singing of bel canto. Fleming, of course, is just about the most sumptuous soprano around, prized particularly for her singing of Strauss (meaning Richard, not Johann, although she's no slouch in operetta either). Many people, however, have reservations about her forays into bel canto -- the music of Donizetti, Bellini, and suchlike. The accusation is that she's not correct or strict enough -- that she is, in a word, too Straussy.

I've done a little of this accusing myself. It is certainly true that Fleming is somewhat unorthodox in bel canto; but she doesn't seem to mind. We have a tendency to be dogmatic in this area of opera: Anyone who departs from perceived correctness is condemned as a charlatan. But there's more than one way to skin a bel canto cat. And if Eileen Farrell had "a right to sing the blues," then surely Renee Fleming has a right to sing Bellini.

And she certainly has. The diva asked the Metropolitan Opera to put on Il Pirata for her, and the company obliged -- Fleming is a star worth pleasing. That Bellini opera had never been staged at the Met, and had been known primarily as a Maria Callas vehicle. Fleming has proven smashing in this production, and, at the same time, she has an album out entitled Bel Canto, which is at the top of the charts (classical version).

As I've written before, Fleming has a plush Cadillac of a voice -- she cannot turn it into a zippy Ford Fiesta overnight. But hers is an agile, adaptable, maneuverable Cadillac. She almost always sings richly, but her work is also clean, accurate, and plenty correct. Technically, she can do anything -- can fly with any of the bird-like voices out there. Many will find (and have found) her singing on this new recording -- from Decca, by the way -- too Romantic, too free, too luxuriant. But it is undeniably first-rate singing, and rare singing, and beautiful singing -- in other words, bel canto.

Soon, Fleming is to come out with a jazz album. Yes, she has "a right," and she has the ability too, in everything she tries. Callas liked to say, "I'm not a lyric soprano, I'm not a coloratura soprano, I'm not a dramatic soprano -- I'm a soprano, damn it." So's Renee Fleming.

-- Midori is now over 30. Isn't that shocking? It seems like yesterday when she was a child prodigy, wowing people on the Johnny Carson show and on stages throughout the world. She is, of course, a one-named wonder, like the late British pianist Solomon, and like her contemporary, Kennedy, the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy.

One name or two, Midori is an impressive musician, and her new album, with the pianist Robert McDonald, is all-French: the sonatas of Poulenc and Debussy, and the Sonata No. 1 in D Minor by Saint-Saens. (The record comes from Sony.) Midori is a knowing "French violinist," as she is a violinist generally. She has not only talent and "fingers" -- raw technique -- but a probing musical intelligence. She is also known for meticulous preparation, which shows in virtually every performance she gives.

It's especially good, in this recording, to hear the Poulenc sonata, which is normally slighted in favor of the other two -- and in favor of the Faure and Franck sonatas. (We're talking the French repertoire here.) The piece is pure Poulenc, with its angularity, melodies, and punch. Midori's playing is crisp, and she is willing to be raw, when necessary, rather than pretty. McDonald is a full partner. Indeed, the Poulenc is as much a piano piece as a violin sonata.

Poulenc wrote a lovely slow movement, as could have been expected from a master of song. Midori -- in the best tradition of French playing -- renders it exquisitely but not preciously. In the final movement -- Tres anime -- she is both incisive and shimmering. These pages are like cut jewels, and, again, thoroughly Poulenc-like.

Today, Midori is part of a wealth of violinists who are in their 20s or 30s: Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham, Maxim Vengerov. It's nice to know that this wunderkind has turned into a wunderadult -- it doesn't always work that way.

-- For some of us, Alberto Ginastera is a delectation. An Argentinean composer, he lived from 1916 to 1983, and left many pleasing works, including two piano concertos. Ginastera was a bit of a nationalist -- South America is never far from his music -- but he was in most respects a thoroughly modern composer, though more talented than most.

It so happens that Ginastera has a champion in Gisele Ben-Dor. She is - - if you will forgive me -- a chick conductor, the director of the Santa Barbara Symphony in California. Women conductors are quite rare, almost as rare as female bass-baritones. It may well be that Ben-Dor is the finest female conductor in the world (although, as Bill Buckley once said, when confronted with the assertion that Lillian Hellman was America's foremost woman playwright, "Maybe so, but isn't that on the order of celebrating the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas?").