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RECITAL REVIEW
Craig Rutenberg
March 1, 2007
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When Art Imitates Criticism By Anna Carol Dudley
Last night in Herbst Theatre, Miss Brewer gave a recital. That would be soprano Christine Brewer, and in reality, she gave her San Francisco Performances recital on Thursday.
One of her encores, "Last Night in Carnegie Hall," gave an amusing framework to the recital we had just heard. The song purports to be a music critic's review, panning the first part of a certain Miss Smith's recital in which the singer eventually finds her voice in the operatic repertoire.
Brewer had cunningly put her own "operatic" pieces in the first, German half of her recital — consisting of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and songs by Richard Strauss and Joseph Marx. "Operatic," that is, as commonly used to refer to vocalists' "classical" repertoire.
Christine Brewer Brewer uses her large voice with close attention to musical and verbal nuance. Possessed of a seemingly endless fund of breath, she manages it superbly, ranging easily between soft and loud, and sensitively phrasing both words and music. And her accompanist, Craig Rutenberg, with the piano lid all the way up, plays magnificently in a variety of styles, and matches her dynamic range. Their performance of Wagner's "Im Treibhaus" (In the greenhouse) caught the spirit of the piece beautifully. The metaphorical plants in the greenhouse are not thriving, because they are far from home. Brewer's sound on the high, soft "süsser Duft" (sweet fragrance) was exquisite, and Rutenberg's delicate piano ending created a lingering fragrance. By contrast, the next song, "Schmerzen" (Anguish), began fortissimo in both voice and piano. The song compares the sun's setting and rising to death and renewed life, pain and bliss. Brewer's phrasing underlined the metaphor tellingly. Two post-Wagner composers, Richard Strauss and Joseph Marx, rounded out the first half of the program. Strauss' "Wiegenlied" (Lullaby) and "Befreit" (Liberated) were personal songs of married love. Occasionally, in the Strauss and elsewhere, Brewer pushed a crescendo a little too hard and sharped slightly. If there is a singer alive who doesn't need to press a crescendo, it is Christine Brewer. With that voice, all she needs to do is open the valve and let the sound flood out. Marx's "Selige Nacht" (Blissful night) and "Hat dich die Liebe berührt" (If love has touched you) were passionate songs of love, and Nature joined her with a 4.2 earthquake as she sang. Only in San Francisco.
After intermission, Brewer presented something entirely different: American repertoire, plus American chat, first about the temblor and later about her garment, a sort of kimono that she modeled by turning about, made from fabric designed by Gary Bukovnik, who has designed many posters for the San Francisco Symphony. She had her music on a stand throughout the recital, for occasional reference. Some songs she had by heart, and her turning of the pages without looking at them revealed that she learns from the score rather than from recordings or coaches. She used the stand fleetingly and well, and I didn't mind it. Whether some in the audience were put off by it, I couldn't say. Brewer created a happy sense of finding herself among friends. Cantata, by John Carter, an arrangement of four spirituals, consisted loosely of a prelude on the piano, a rondo ("Peter, go ring dem bells"), a recitative ("Sometimes I feel like a motherless child"), an air ("Let us break bread together"), and a toccata ("Ride on, King Jesus"). The piece provided scope for impressive chest tones, contrasting moods, and piano fireworks. Three songs from the Broadway show St. Louis Woman (1946) were the high point of the evening. Brewer brought a superb sense of style to her singing of Harold Arlen's wonderful settings of lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Her swooping portamento in "Come rain or come shine," her ability to sing in various voices in the dialogue of "I had myself a true love," her bleak "I wonder what became of me" — all of them combined with strong feeling for the blues and a terrific sense of timing — made the Arlen a standout set. And Rutenberg was no slouch at the style either, all the way to the wistful piano closing. When Brewer came out onstage for the third time, Rutenberg asked her, "Are you gonna talk again?" Well, she did want to tell us that she was about to sing a group of songs with which Kirsten Flagstad often ended her programs in the U.S.: songs by American composers A. Walter Kramer, Samuel Barber, Mildred Lund Tyson, and Edwin McArthur. They were a nice historical touch, but these four songs are largely forgettable. Christina, can we talk? Forget the Flagstad songs. Stick with Harold Arlen. Encores, ardently requested by the audience, were "I am a poor pilgrim" ("City of Heaven" by Hall Johnson) and the aforementioned "Last night in Carnegie Hall" ("The Critic" by Celius Dougherty).
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculty of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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