Renée Fleming: “Voice of Nature”
The New Yorker
Renée Fleming: “Voice of Nature”
“Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” a new record from the soprano Renée Fleming, uses Romantic and contemporary songs to chart humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world in the face of climate change. (Geologists use the term “Anthropocene” to describe the epoch in which humans started having a noticeable impact on the environment.) The album begins at the end, with songs about twilight, but it is the opposite of a heavy-handed gesture: Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s piano playing flickers like starlight in rapturous songs by Kevin Puts and Reynaldo Hahn, as Fleming’s voice floats and blooms with its customary beauty. Her tone is focussed and propulsive throughout the album, and any preachiness is mercifully limited to a single song (Nico Muhly’s “Endless Space”). Ultimately, the tracks communicate awe more than admonishment, wrapped as they are in a voice of such loveliness.