From Newsday, February 2004

Not since the Big Bang has there been a concentration of musical star power greater than Tuesday's Schubertiade at Carnegie Hall.

The event brought together four of today's most celebrated vocalists: Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Matthew Polenzani and René Pape. At the piano was James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera and soon-to-be music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

If the program failed to shine as brightly as expected, it was not for lack of wattage, but for too much of it. The sheer extravagance of talent, while offering a great deal to admire, made for a drawn-out love-fest: 32 songs, each one followed by applause, stretched out over a fitful 2 1/2 hours.

Levine offered performances of stunning beauty. The most unobtrusive of accompanists, he worked selflessly for the glory of the singers. The crashing chords that opened "An die Leier" ("To the Lyre") transformed magically into the shimmering strings of a harp, while the accompaniment of "Im Frühling" ("In Spring") sparkled with the light of an April morning sky. It was easy to forget that Levine was playing what is classified as a percussion instrument, so liquid and velvety were the sounds he summoned, though he also made the piano thunder and rage in the roiling "Der Atlas."

Levine found his most inspired partner in bass-baritone Pape, who did not sing, but rather inhabited Schubert's fusion of poetry and song. Pape's rich, mahogany tone seemed to reach out and embrace the huge hall, but he drained it of color to chilling effect for the anguished queries of "Der Wanderer."

In "Kriegers Ahnung" ("Warrior's Foreboding"), he conveyed both the soldier's grim premonition and the lover's breathless longing. Two songs from "Die Winterreise," heavy with fatigue and awe in the face of death, left one yearning to hear him undertake the full cycle.

Mezzo-soprano von Otter, by contrast, was not in top form. Fluttery tone marred her opening songs, though she offered an absorbing reading of "Nacht und Träume" ("Night and Dreams"), sweet with a quiet glow. "Der Zwerg" ("The Dwarf") found her at her best, capturing the weird, sickly darkness of this ballad of murder and lust.

Fleming lavished her dewy timbre on "Lachen und Weinen" ("Laughing and Weeping") and turned in a breathy but admirably committed "Gretchen am Spinnrade" ("Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel"). Her "Rastlose Liebe" ("Restless Love") was undone by her tendency toward washes of luscious tone rather than a considered reading of Goethe's poem.

Matthew Polenzani, an up-and-coming luminary in a cluster of superstars, offered some of the evening's most impressive performances. He sang a spirited "Im Frühling," picking his way nimbly among the song's verbal intricacies and meandering vocal line. He also served up an airy, graceful "Adelaide," his sweet, refined lyric tenor alive with the wonder of young love.

Any one of these artists, with Levine at the piano, would make for a princely Liederabend.

With any luck, Tuesday's concert will be a sampler of glorious (and more coherent) such programs to come.