Vocalist Renée Fleming’s latest recital is actually a unique trio delving into the mind that is processing her music-making: A trio of the soprano, the piano accompanist and the neuroscience prof from U.C. Berkeley, Ehud Isacoff. This rare lecture-concert is altogether vivid and possible in this streaming format on the web, with Isacoff constantly “entering the brain” of a singer to explain about emotion (despair, repose, lament, love), memory, and performance requisites.

Diva Fleming has spent some of the past five years since leaving the opera world to study the brain and the mind. Even if you don’t know the cerebellum from the hippocampus, or can’t differentiate task memory from cognitive memory, this is a fascinating trip through the brain and mind, interspersed with art songs in three languages exploiting mostly the mezzo range. For those suspecting her edging toward retirement, you’re off-base; she is on top of this repertoire, with decent French, very good German, refined pitch, and a wealth of feeling in the depths of emotion. The voice is never grainy, flowing freely and attractively, even if her Gershwin “Fascinating Rhythm” borders on the starchy-square.

In this 63-minute package filmed for Cal Performances, I was frankly quite moved by her French songs of resignation: Fauré’s “Prison,” the yet more haunting Duparc “Le manoir de Rosemonde,” and “Sleep” by the tragic and virtually unknown woman composer of a century ago, Claire Delbos. Each of these songs depicted the grappling with personal monsters in real life.

The capper for these ears were the offerings of Hugo Wolf, one of the most underrated lieder composers from the late romantic era, where a work like “Mignon III” revels in flagging tonality and growing chromaticism, much like his masterful and pictorial songs on poetry of Eduard Mörike—inevitably absent, but perennially on my Wolf-song wish list.

The sensitive pianism is contributed by Robert Ainsley.

The contribution of the video-savvy Isacoff is a road map as to how performers and audiences learn, process, perform or remember music, without getting too technical. The verbal exchanges between him and Fleming are as rare as they are essential, at least partially illuminating our brains, whether functioning or malfunctioning. (Leave my brain out of this, please!) Ultimately I come away convinced that we know more about brain malfunctions than about normal activity as related to music.

The world-premiere piece for the occasion was by Tod Machover, originally for the Kronos String Quartet and electronics, but now with the (wordless) vocalise of a female singer added overhead—an even more effective opus, now speaking to the heart and not just to the physicist. “Vocagammified” is built partly on electronic accompaniment, particularly over the gamma frequency at 40 Hertz, known to produce calming effects in us humans. (40 Hertz is roughly the lowest F on a string bass, and about a fifth below the lowest cello note.) And we nerds in the audience even profit from electronic projections of waves between glimpses of the ever resourceful Ms. Fleming, for whom singing is an art blended here amicably with brain research.

“Music and the Mind,” a prerecorded vocal recital by Renée Fleming, with interjected neuroscience discussions/overtones. Streamed now till July 28; 63 minutes. Under auspices of Cal Performances, Berkeley. For info: 510-642-9988, or go online: calperformances.org.

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