Latest news with #RenéeFleming
Business Journals
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Journals
REVIEW: Renée Fleming soars in ‘Voice of Nature' in May Festival finale
Renée Fleming's performance, accompanied by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under the baton of guest conductor Robert Moody, was titled "Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene." The piece inclued a nature film by the National Geographic Society, which was projected on a screen above the orchestra.
South China Morning Post
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Lang Lang, Renée Fleming, Tan Dun, Anne-Sophie Mutter among HKPhil 2025-26 season's stars
A star-studded line-up awaits Hong Kong Philharmonic concertgoers in its 2025-26 season, including pianist Lang Lang, soprano Renée Fleming, composer Tan Dun and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Tarmo Peltokoski , who will become the orchestra's music director in the second half of 26, will conduct three programmes during the season, while the 25-year-old's fellow Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen will be composer-in-residence. This season's artistic partner, Italian Daniele Gatti, returns to conduct the Phil, as do British conductor Daniel Harding, music director of Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area, Singaporean Kahchun Wong, principal conductor of Britain's Hallé Ochestra, and German Anja Bihlmaier. Lang Lang will play Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the orchestra on December 11 and 13, when he will share the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall stage with Peltokoski for the first time. Soprano Renée Fleming, who will perform music from her award-winning album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in October 2025. Photo: Andrew Eccles, courtesy of Decca American soprano Renée Fleming will perform music by Handel, Fauré, Listz and contemporary composers from her award-winning album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene on October 24-25. Her performances will be accompanied by a film commissioned from the National Geographic Society for the album.
New York Times
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: With Last-Minute Conductor Swap, Philharmonic Soldiers On
The final weeks of an orchestra's season can feel like the end of school: Everyone's worn down and summer is beckoning. Last week's program at the New York Philharmonic had that mood even before a late-breaking curveball that tested the orchestra further. The Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena was to be on the podium for the New York debut of Kevin Puts's 'The Brightness of Light,' an orchestral song cycle featuring the soprano Renée Fleming and the baritone Rod Gilfry, along with Ravel's rapturous 'Daphnis et Chloé.' But the Philharmonic announced on Thursday afternoon — just a day before the concerts — that Mena would not be conducting. No reason was provided, and his management did not respond to inquiries. (In January, Mena disclosed his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.) Instead, the conductor Brett Mitchell, the music director of California's Pasadena Symphony and a newcomer to the Philharmonic, stepped in. Mitchell possesses the right credentials, having led 'The Brightness of Light' at the Colorado Symphony with Fleming and Gilfry in 2019. Still, this was no easy task given his truncated rehearsal time and lack of familiarity with the players. 'The Brightness of Light' is a portrait of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. For the libretto, Puts uses selections from their correspondence — from the heady rush of their early relationship through its souring and O'Keeffe's deepening romance with the landscape of New Mexico. (This work expands on an earlier piece with Fleming, 'Letters,' that relies solely on O'Keeffe's perspective.) Puts, who also wrote the opera 'The Hours' with Fleming in mind, adores her voice's glowing luminosity; his orchestral writing often bathes her in shining halos of sound, and on Friday she returned the favor. Gilfry, who was also making his New York Philharmonic debut, handled Stieglitz with polish, though the role functions as little more than a foil for O'Keeffe's personal and artistic evolution. The music was accompanied by Wendall K. Harrington's visuals, which included projections of work by O'Keeffe and Stieglitz, images of the couple's letters, and libretto supertitles. Puts leans on the projections to do the storytelling; the music often feels more like accompaniment than main attraction. Still, he illustrates the couple's complicated relationship with verve and humor, deploying rapid percussion to express the nervous, bright energy of new love, and a hacking, squawking violin solo (played by the concertmaster Frank Huang) to go with the lines 'I've labored on the violin till all my fingers are sore — You never in your wildest dreams imagined anything worse than the notes I get out of it.' (A little on the nose, but enjoyable nonetheless.) Then came the Ravel, played with a steely determination to get through the not-ideal circumstances. Mitchell was restrained: not quite letting the players steer 'Daphnis et Chloé,' but not doing much to articulate his own vision either. Style came mainly from soloists — especially the principal flutist Robert Langevin's shapely contributions — and from the New York Philharmonic Chorus, directed by Malcolm J. Merriweather, which leaned into Ravel's rich tonal colors. School may be almost out, but the Philharmonic passed this particular test with grit.
Telegraph
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A magnificent return for Renée Fleming, plus the best of March's classical concerts
Renée Fleming/ Royal Festival Hall ★★★★☆ Since her retirement from the operatic stage was announced in 2017 the great American soprano Renée Fleming has had more comebacks than the Spice Girls. She's played Pat Nixon in John Adams' Nixon in China, taken the lead role in a brand-new opera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the scene of her greatest triumphs, and recorded an album of song which carried off a Grammy Award. And she insists she never said she was retiring anyway. Now in her mid-60s, Fleming is throwing most of her energies into music-and-health initiatives and rations her appearances carefully. Her performance last night with the London Philharmonic Orchestra was billed as 'An Evening with Renée Fleming', but most of the evening was actually taken up with orchestral highlights from Wagner's Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger, each flowing into the next in a rapturous phantasmagoria. On the podium was young German conductor Thomas Guggeis, who seemed over-controlling and somewhat rigid in the purely orchestral pieces, but was a wonderfully sensitive accompanist to Fleming – which was what really mattered. As for Fleming herself, she sang only the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss, and one lovely encore. It seemed a small thing to fly across the Atlantic for. But it was worth it. Fleming's voice may not have the power it once had, and there were times, especially in the refulgent last song when she was overpowered by the orchestra. But the exquisite sheen is still there, and that magnificent control of the melodic line, which never wavered. And above all the connection with the emotional heart of Strauss's masterpiece. Strauss's songs distil a lifetime of experience and his tempestuous 60-year marriage to his beloved Pauline, in feelings of gratitude and an acceptance of mortality. Nature acts as the mirror of these feelings, beginning with a rush of ecstasy in Spring, and darkening towards the sunset of the final song. Fleming caught that transition beautifully. The ending of September where she sang of falling leaves was perhaps the evening's most blissful moment – a feeling amplified by the lovely sunset-glow horn solo from John Ryan. In the third song where the words speak of sinking into sleep, it was a smiling, eyes-closed, almost-inaudible form of oblivion Fleming offered. We were back in the world of Wagner's Liebestod (Love-Death) from Tristan and Isolde, which the LPO and Guggeis had shrewdly played as a curtain-raiser to set us in the right mood. Though Fleming's sound was predominantly radiant it could take on a dark intensity, which rung out with startling force on the very first word of the first song – 'dämmrigen', half-light. Lovely though all this was, the evening's best moment vocally actually came in the encore, Strauss's rapturous, quiet Morgen (morning) where the lighter orchestration meant that Fleming's exquisite small voice could float freely, and the words were properly audible. As Fleming departed with a friendly smile, the applause wasn't the wild kind that often greets a diva's fleeting appearance. It was a heartfelt acknowledgement of real artistry.
Axios
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Charlotte Symphony Orchestra among first to perform at newly restored Carolina Theatre
Carolina Theatre will reopen soon after a $90 million restoration. Why it matters: The historic Uptown theater has been closed since the late 1970s. The project to restore it has taken more than a decade to complete. Driving the news: Charlotte Symphony Orchestra (CSO) will be among the first to perform inside the Carolina Theatre at Belk Place. Its spring gala, entitled "A Homecoming," will be Friday, March 28, at 7:30pm. Grammy Award-winning soprano Renée Fleming and members of CSO will also perform Tickets for the performance start at $83.85. Tickets for the gala start at $750. The intrigue: This is among Carolina Theatre's first performances, but it's unclear if it will be the first. More information about Carolina Theatre's reopening will be available in the coming weeks, per a Carolina Theatre spokesperson. Flashback: Carolina Theatre (230 N Tryon St.) opened in 1927 and closed in 1978. Charlotte Symphony Orchestra's first performance took place at Carolina Theatre on March 20, 1932. "As a community-first nonprofit theatre, it's no coincidence the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra will be among the first to take the stage at the Carolina Theatre," Carolina Theatre executive director Sean Seifert said in a statement. Between the lines: The theater anchors Belk Place, which is named in honor of the Belk family, who are the lead donors for the project. The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County also contributed to the theater's restoration. Go deeper: Inside Uptown's historic theater restoration
