When yet another recital of Schubert Lieder appears, composed in the main of well-known songs, one looks for some special attributes to set it off from what has gone before in such profusion. Renee Fleming frequently supplies just those touches of individual response and high art which the ear is seeking. In the first place she provides one of the most beautiful, healthy voices one could wish to hear, adding to her lovely tone an attractive touch of vibrancy, at times calling to mind Dame Margaret Price at her best. Like Price she brings considerable stage experience to bear on her readings in terms of dramatic immediacy. That is particularly true of Die junge Nonne and Gretchen am Spinnrade, both of which carry the charge of emotions made manifest at the moment of recording. Indeed, her large-scale, urgent account of Gretchen must now rank among the most desirable on disc, much helped by the experienced Eschenbach’s playing, the piano urging on the voice to even greater heights of intensity – as it does on a smaller scale in Der Tod und das Madchen.
There is almost as much to enjoy and appreciate in the more reflective, inward pieces. Im Fruhling, in both voice and piano, catches very precisely the sense of longing evoked by the spring, with Eschenbach pointing up the poignancy of alternating major-minor. In An die Nachtigall, Fleming’s tone is poised, finely controlled. Even more so in the more difficult Du bist die Ruh, where she shades the end of the final two couplets with a ravishing piano. Nacht und Traume, still harder to sustain, is as time-stopping as it should be.
In the sadly neglected flower-ballad Viola the pair suggest a true partnership of thought and execution. In the Hyperion Schubert Edition (1/90), Ann Murray and Graham Johnson offer a lighter reading, but best of all are Fischer-Dieskau and Moore (DG, 3/93). In a more invigorating interpretation, they lop almost three minutes off the timing of the other pairings, and the baritone – how can it be otherwise? – finds nuances in the text and music overlooked by his rivals, but then you may prefer the simpler approach of the newcomers
At least three other songs, Auf dem Wasser zu singen, Ave Maria and Fruhlingsglaube seem marginally too slow. Here, and sometimes elsewhere, a shade more rhythmic verve, a greater attention to consonants, as the Fischer-Dieskau comparison points up, would improve on what is already a formidable array of virtues, and Eschenbach’s habit of indulging in ritenutos sometimes becomes a distraction. These small points apart, this is a Liederabend to savour and it has been faultlessly recorded at Tanglewood.'