Soprano casts a seven-encore spell

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Somewhere between the fifth and sixth of her seven encores, a beaming Renée Fleming looked out at the cheering, whistling Benaroya Hall audience and joked, "We're moving here."

The resulting roars of approval suggested that Fleming and her peerless pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, were more than welcome to take up permanent residence in the hall. Indeed, for a time on Tuesday evening, it appeared as if they might do just that - drawn back for encore after encore by an audience that kept the standing ovation going. This is the kind of recital music lovers live for: artists who adore what they're doing, who connect with the listeners, and who pour out such glorious sound waves that nobody wants the evening to end.

Concert review Renée Fleming, Soprano, with Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, in Seattle Symphony Distinguished Artists Series recital; Benaroya Hall, Tuesday night.

It was an unusual recital in many respects. The repertoire, which ran from Fauré and Debussy to Austrian composer Joseph Marx and Rachmaninoff, all was from the turn of the past century, rather than the tried-and-true recital formula that marches through several centuries in chronological order. Nor do you usually get two sets of solo works from the pianist - an extra bonanza in this case, since Thibaudet is a brilliant artist whose solo career has brought him to Seattle on several occasions.

What really distinguished the recital, of course, was its quality: Two superbly matched artists who seem born to perform together. Fleming is the diva ascendant, the darling of Vogue and People, as well as opera companies and concert fans around the world.

Thibaudet is that rare concert pianist who can subsume his own musical ego into a partnership that serves the music first. Together, they're magic.

Without any of the coy stage mannerisms often adopted by song recitalists, Fleming instantly got to the heart of each song with performances that were full of expressive meaning.

That creamy voice poured forth with consummate ease and exquisite breath control, most movingly in the deeply romantic Rachmaninoff songs. The program contained an unusual number of high notes; you don't often hear so many high B's in a recital (and these were killer B's, too).

Thibaudet shone in the fiendishly difficult accompaniments of the Marx pieces, but most of all in a Chopin set (two nocturnes and an étude) and a pair of Debussy pieces - a lovely take on "Clair de Lune" and a glittering, show-stopping "Jeux d'artifice."

Most fun of all, not surprisingly, were the encores, which started with a nod to Fleming's Seattle Opera debut in Dvorák's "Rusalka" (she sang the "Song to the Moon," that opera's big soprano aria).

The applause just got louder when the pair returned for a Strauss song ("Caecilie"), and louder still for an ultra-bluesy arrangement of "Over the Rainbow." An aria from Puccini's "La Rondine" was succeeded by "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" (in a performance that did indeed have that swing), then the beloved "O Mio Babbino Caro" aria (from Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi"), and finally a lovely and heartfelt Ernst Bacon song, "It's All I Have to Bring."

If that was all they had to bring, it was plenty. This was the kind of evening you don't forget soon - the kind that comes around all too seldom.