Distant Light – Renee Fleming

   in Classical Music (Mar, 2017)
Fleming premiered Hillborg’s cycle and even worked with the composer selecting which texts (by poet Mark Strand) were to be set. Much is recitative, delivered over gossamer textures of great beauty, punctuated with dazzling orchestral punctuation from a true craftsman. Fleming is in great voice and makes the strongest possible case for the piece, and turns in a masterfully judged account of Barber’s lyric rhapsody. If she’s less comfortable in the three short Björk songs, skilfully arranged by Hans Ek, they are best thought of as a bonus to bring the disc to a playing time of 48 minutes. …

   in Opera Now (Feb, 2017)
Renée Fleming, another superstar soprano, gives us one of her more contemplative programmes with Distant Light. The title comes from The Strand Settings, a song cycle composed for her by Swede Anders Hillborg and premiered in 2013, set to texts by late poet Mark Strand. Fleming obviously relishes the atmospheric music that Hillborg provides for her, and her soprano sails and swoops through the generally wistful and gossamer textures that the orchestration provides, drifting in and out of tonality with just the odd burst of aggression for contrast. Her tone is still refulgent and capable of soaring through generously arching paragraphs, so Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 also …