Renée Fleming, Jean-Yves Thibaudet - Night Songs (2001)

A little night music from two internationally famous soloists. There is no reason why they should automatically hit it off, but they do, and the results are spectacular. Fleming and Thibaudet make a fantastic, and entirely natural partnership. For a start they both have a bit of showbiz about them; a more immaculately dressed couple of musicians would be hard to imagine. But they are both extremely gifted - technically and musically – and furthermore, their gifts and concerns dovetail to make a convincing whole. Both are interested in the infinite little shadings, the colours that make songs so beautiful, and neither are afraid to strain for the extreme that makes them interesting.

Thibaudet is a fantastic accompanist, or collaborator as Fleming more accurately calls him. He has worked with top quality singers before – recordings with Bartolli and Fassbaender – and understands the art of songs perfectly. His voicing is immaculate, and his sense of balance, both within the piano writing and with the singer is excellent Fleming is at the height of her powers, an artist whose interpretations Strauss are pre-eminent amongst current singers. His music is represented here, almost a calling card, but she has indulged her Francophile tendencies, and also her musicological ones, including some lesser known works by Marx and Rachmaninov.

Indeed, the most enjoyable of the many fine aspects to this disc is that in its beautifully varied selection it captures so many aspects of the night : the tired, the erotic, the warm, the cold, the long, the short. Some are obvious choices, like Fauré’s Clair de Lune, some inspired, like the Marx selection and some tenuous, like the Chansons de Bilitis, but they all combine to make a most beautifully varied dish.

Although the technical performances are stunning, the French songs that open this album seem to me the least successful, although these things are relative. They are a little robust for my cliché-ridden taste, perhaps a little over-wrought at the climax, and her Debussy, whilst admirably free of mist or vagueness, is a little too direct.

Everything else is pure gold however. The Strauss lieder are every bit as good as you imagined they would be. The Rachmaninov songs are deliciously dark. My favourite of all are the four Marx songs. They are well worth discovering, introverted and delicate music of real yearning. The performances are gorgeous, the two musicians in complete sympathy with each other and the music, alternately soaring convincingly and whispering tenderly. Gorgeous. -- Aidan Twomey