Review: Renee Fleming Glows in the Desert Sun of Kevin Puts' LETTERS FROM GEORGIA

Georgia O'Keeffe: She of the famous flower paintings that look like women's nether regions--dressed in monk-like clothes and probably wouldn't have worn lipstick on a dare. Those are hardly images you'd associate with the glamorous diva, soprano Renee Fleming. She just doesn't conjure "the down-home girl," even if she did sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 2013. But, amazingly, when Fleming opened her mouth and began to sing the first of the five songs in Kevin Puts' song cycle, LETTERS FROM GEORGIA, at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, these two disparate artists became one.

The Eastman School of Music commissioned the songs from Puts for Fleming to mark the first visit to New York City in 25 years of the Eastman Philharmonia--its senior student performing ensemble--under Neil Varon. The results from the Puts score were intoxicating, whether invoking visions of Taos, New Mexico, or joking about O'Keeffe's inept attempt at playing the violin (brava to concertmaster Willa Finck), or contemplating the end of the painter's life.

Fleming and Puts, both distinguished alumni of Eastman, collaborated on the choice of material--from volumes of correspondence to Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and art promoter who later became her husband, and Anita Pollitzer, a friend since art school and suffragette. (One letter is from the Stieglitz/O'Keeffe archive at Yale.) It turned out to be an fruitful partnership, combining Puts' smart choices of instrumentation--whether harshly scraping strings or the dynamic use of percussion--with the singer's expressiveness. Together, they made the evening so satisfying, with the orchestra doing its best work.

I can't remember the last time I heard Fleming sound so gorgeous--not surprising since the music was written specifically for her. She was completely engaged in the intimate nature of the letters, whether between lovers or friends, as Puts' music beautifully explores the hopes, the yearning, the sadness expressed in O'Keeffe's words. Puts captured her--and O'Keeffe--at their best. The composer has talked about doing a bigger piece, which will be a little more staged, and would add a second character, Stieglitz, to be sung by a baritone. I look forward to hearing it.

LETTERS FROM GEORGIA formed the core of the program, sandwiched between the odd coupling of Ravel and Prokofiev and using a larger ensemble than in the Puts work. While Rapsodie espagnole and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony both showed off the high level of accomplishment attained by the young musicians of the orchestra, their usual venue at Eastman Hall in Rochester, NY, is more than twice the size of Tully. Unfortunately, I thought that conductor Varon frequently allowed them to overwhelm the smaller venue, particularly in the often bombastic Prokofiev, though the dramatic close of the first movement and the smashing climax of the Adagio were quite effective.

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