Renée Fleming reviews

This short disc’s triumph? Clearly it is Anders Hillborg’s The Strand Settings, four atmospheric settings of plain-worded poems of love, loneliness and loss by the Canadian poet Mark Strand, composed for the creamy soprano of Renée Fleming. Premiered in 2013, the piece already seems a classic with its declamatory vocal ardour, orchestral finesse, and communicative confluence of styles, from tinkling minimalism to a snatch of mock Handel.

It’s a frustrating luxury to get Renée Fleming’s second Arabella on DVD when we need to see the more poised heroines of Anja Harteros and Anne Schwanewilms. Still, this is a more perceptive production than the first on Decca, and supported by full, balanced orchestra under Christian Thielemann. Fleming’s is a nuanced characterisation, with the right Straussian bloom save for the Act II duet.

On 1 September 2012, Saxony’s great and good assembled in Dresden’s sumptuous Semperoper for Christian Thielemann’s inaugural concert as the orchestra’s music director. Thanks to digital technology, we can now join them, seeing sights along the way that may have passed the audience by. Renée Fleming’s microscopic glances, checking her conductor’s beat; sweat on foreheads; the principal flautist’s russet locks, caught in close-ups: every surface trapping is here in pinprick detail, especially if seen on Blu-Ray.

Recorded at the Faenol Festival in North Wales, this lengthy programme brings together two star singers in a clutch of operatic extracts (including ‘Granada’ – well it’s foreign, innit?), followed by songs from the shows, a genre which Bryn Terfel, in particular, has made a speciality.