CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Christine Brewer
Craig Rutenberg

Zankel Hall
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Christine Brewer, Soprano
Craig Rutenberg, Piano

GLUCK "Divinités du Styx" from Alceste
WAGNER Wesendonck Lieder, Op. 91
·· Der Engel
·· Stehe still!
·· Im Treibhaus
·· Schmerzen
·· Träume
R. STRAUSS "Ich liebe dich," Op. 37, No. 2
R. STRAUSS "Breit über mein Haupt dein schwarzes Haar," Op. 19, No. 3
R. STRAUSS "Befreit," Op. 39, No. 4
MARX "Selige Nacht"
MARX "Hat Dich die Liebe berührt"
BRITTEN "Calypso"
BRITTEN "Tell Me the Truth About Love"
BRITTEN "Johnny"
BRITTEN "Funeral Blues"
J. CARTER Cantata
S. HOMER "Sing to Me, Sing"
MCARTHUR "Night"
SARGENT "Hickory Hill"
BRIDGE "Love Went a'Riding"
FIRESTONE "If I Could Tell You"
LAFORGE "Hills"

Encores:
ARLEN "I Had Myself A True Love"
DOUGHERTY "Review"
(arr. HALL JOHNSON) "City Called Heaven"

Program is approximately 1 hour, 40 minutes, including one intermission

This concert and the Pure Voice series are sponsored by the Jean & Jula Goldwurm Memorial Foundation in memory of Jula Goldwurm.

Program Notes:

Opera in the Classical Era

During his years of service to the Habsburg imperial court in Vienna (1752–1773), Gluck achieved major reforms to over-stylized operatic conventions in opera seria (early 18th-century “serious opera” in a format that emphasized solo arias). Along with his collaborators, he desired a moratorium on empty vocal virtuosity; a more syllabic style of text setting; less text repetition; simpler, more lyrical melodic lines; and a blurring of distinctions between lyrical and declamatory passages. Moving to Paris in November 1773, Gluck wrote eight operas for Parisian theaters before returning to Vienna for his final years.

Alceste is the second of Gluck’s “reform operas” (after Orfeo ed Euridice); it was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1767, and a heavily revised version with a French libretto by François Louis Gand-Leblanc du Roullet appeared nine years later.

At the story’s beginning, King Admète of Thessaly is dying. Apollo’s oracle declares that he can be saved only at the cost of someone else’s life. His wife, Alceste, sings “Divinités du Styx” at the end of Act I after she has resolved to offer herself in Admète’s place. Gluck conveys her agitation by means of syncopation (rhythmic patterns that deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats). He molds his music to each shift of mood and tone in his text in accord with “reform” principles; one notes the slow, awe-filled invocation of ministers of death and the animated tempo at the words, “I feel a new force; I go where my love calls me.”


A Song Cycle from an Operatic Giant

In November 1856, Richard Wagner wrote Princess Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein—daughter of the Polish-born Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein who pursued a 40-year liaison with Franz Liszt—to say that while working on the opera Siegfried, he had slipped “unaware into Tristan … music without words for the present.” The history of Tristan und Isolde (1865), a work that reformed not just opera but the language of music, is entangled with the genesis of the Wesendonck Lieder. Wagner cared little for Lied after his student years in Leipzig and found no occasion to compose songs until 1857, when he was embroiled in an affair with a silk merchant’s wife, Mathilde Wesendonck, who wrote these five sensual-ecstatic or sorrowful poems.

In the first song, “Der Engel,” we hear of legends told in childhood about angels whose mission is to comfort souls in sorrow by bearing them heavenwards. Wagner lifts his consolatory music upward in three stages that we might hear celestial elevation enacted. In “Stehe still!,” the poetic persona implores the cosmic wheel of time to stop so that the lovers’ moment of pure passion might endure forever. For the “Rad der Zeit” (wheel of time), we hear majestic wheeling, circling figures in the piano that lead to the unlocked secrets of “holy nature” in primal, grandiose C major (music’s most elemental key). In “Im Treibhaus,” the persona compares herself to plants in a hothouse. “Mute witness of sorrows, sweet scent rises upwards,” Mathilde writes, while Wagner’s music rises upward in yearning. The music of this song subsequently reappears in the Prelude to Act III of Tristan und Isolde and again at the beginning of Tristan’s “Weiten Reich der Weltennacht,” part of his great monologue before dying. The final song, “Träume,” is a distillation-in-a-nutshell of the tonal revolution Wagner brought into being, with its chromatic harmonies that refuse resolution, enacting in dream-like motion the ongoing perpetuation of desire; at its beginning and end, it anticipates the love duet, “O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe,” in Act II of Tristan.


Wagner’s Successors: Richard Strauss and Joseph Marx

“Actually, I like my songs best,” Richard Strauss once said to the great singer Hans Hotter. Believing that great poetry was too self-sufficient for musical setting, Strauss gravitated to minor poets from a generation or two before his own (Baron Detlev von Liliencron and Adolf Friedrich von Schack), as well as his contemporaries (Richard Dehmel).

The setting of Liliencron’s “Ich liebe dich” is a display-piece whose speaker announces her love for better or worse, whether amidst aristocratic pomp or begging in the streets. The fanfares make clear that this is a proclamation, culminating in an exuberant piano postlude. Johannes Brahms had already discovered the poetry of Count Adolf von Schack for songs such as “Abenddämmerung” (“Twilight”), and Strauss too would gravitate to his verse for the six poems of Op. 19, including “Breit über mein Haupt dein schwarzes Haar,” a majestic renunciation of the light of sun and stars for the dark radiance of the beloved’s tresses. This song demonstrates Strauss’s ability to concoct vocal melodies that provide sensuous delight for singer and listener alike, with their characteristic rapturous leaps into the vocal stratosphere.

Richard Dehmel’s 1896 anthology, Weib und Welt (“Woman and World”), caused a scandal for its eroticism; Strauss set 11 of Dehmel’s poems to music, including “Befreit.” Dehmel did not like the song, thinking the music was “a little too soft for the poem.” For this poem in which a lover releases his beloved to the death they both know is coming, Strauss devises a song that begins softly—the two harmonies that go back and forth at the beginning hint at the two different worlds of life and death—but includes climactic moments more than sufficient to thrill the listener, if not the picky poet.

The south Styrian composer Joseph Marx is known primarily for his songs. In the span of four years (1908–1912), he composed around 120 songs; more would follow, all in a style that mixes late Romanticism and Impressionism, with debts to Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Max Reger, and others. “Selige Nacht” is a setting of an original poem by Otto Erich Hartleben, who translated the Belgian poet Albert Giraud’s poetic cycle Pierrot lunaire—the impetus for Arnold Schoenberg’s great song cycle in 1912. Here, a pair of lovers lies in bed, rapt in post-coital bliss, while hand-crossing figures in the piano keep the love flowing; the rich, warm blaze of C major at the “scent of roses” is one notable moment of high Romanticism in this song. “Hat dich die Liebe berüht” is another hymn to love as the crowning glory of life, to words by Paul Heyse, also a translator whose paraphrases of Spanish and Italian folk poetry were set to music by Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. This song perfectly displays Marx’s late Romantic, lush sound world.


Benjamin Britten and Cabaret Song

The shy Benjamin Britten, like Schubert, enjoyed improvising at the piano on social occasions. These cabaret songs to texts by W. H. Auden were created for singer-diseuse (a female entertainer who performs monologues) Hedli Anderson, wife of poet Louis MacNeice. In “Calypso,” Auden mimics Afro-Caribbean / West Indian rhythms to evoke rushing to Grand Central Station to meet his new lover; Britten sets these words to an exciting imitation of a train in the piano. “Johnny” is a set of variations in which each stanza is in a different style: pseudo-folksong, polka or square dance, opera, slow waltz in French cabaret style, and a bit of blues. No matter what ploy or what music the persona tries, the beloved Johnny always “frowns like thunder” and goes away. “Tell Me the Truth about Love” is in Cole Porter–mode, with classical allusions to remind us that sophisticates created cabaret. The text of “Funeral Blues” became newly famous for its appearance in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Originally composed as incidental music for Auden’s play The Ascent of F6, this lament builds to a peak of tragic intensity.


Mostly American

Our country has more riches by way of song composition than one might suppose. African American composer John Carter studied at Oberlin College and was a composer-in-residence with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1968. His reimagining of spirituals in Cantata comes from 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act. The word cantata (derived from the Italian cantare, “to sing”) designates a multi-sectional vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment that originated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Carter’s wordless Prelude has no formal measures (which is rare in notated music), and the Rondo (Peter go ring dem bells) sounds pealing bells that reach an emphatic climax at the end. The Recitative (Sometimes I feel like a motherless child) is a haunting, spare creation, while the Air (Let us break bread together on our knees) exemplifies Carter’s typical expressive vocal writing and a piano part filled with modernism’s astringencies. The Toccata (Ride on King Jesus) culminates in a thrilling, percussive recollection of the pealing chimes originally heard in the Rondo.

The Boston-born Sidney Homer taught music to his nephew Samuel Barber, who always credited his uncle’s gift of song. He composed some 100 songs to poems by William Blake, Christina Rossetti, Longfellow, Yeats, and poet-publisher William Ernest Henley, on whom Robert Louis Stevenson based the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island. “Sing to Me, Sing” is a full-throated hymn to Homer’s wife, the famous Metropolitan Opera contralto Louise Homer.

The Juilliard-trained Edwin McArthur (1907–1987) was a celebrated conductor, pianist, and accompanist for Kirsten Flagstad. His song “Night,” is a setting of a poem by Charles Hanson Towne, who edited such publications as Harper’s Bazaar. A hymn to night as “the shadow of God,” it begins quietly and builds to a thunderous climax, with an evocative tonal shift en route to contrast the wonders of noon with nocturnal rapture.

Paul Sargent’s songs include “Manhattan Joy Ride,” Robert Frost’s “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening,” the wonderfully named “File for Future Reference,” and “Hickory Hill,” on a poem by Harvard poet Robert Hillyer. This beautifully brooding song, with its dissonant stabs of pain and its ghostly rustlings in the treble, tells of bygone voices that linger in those places where love was lost.

Songwriter Idabelle Firestone, married to Harvey Firestone (founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company), wrote such popular works as “You Are the Song in My Heart.” “If I Could Tell You” was one of the theme songs for the Voice of Firestone programs that began in 1928 and continued for three decades thereafter.

The one exception to this outpouring of American music is the early 20th century British composer Frank Bridge, who was Benjamin Britten’s composition teacher. He began composing songs as a student of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music; his works in this genre belong almost entirely to his early years, before his turn to modernism in the 1920s. “Love Went a’Riding” is one of the most exhilarating rides in all of English song; the three heaven-storming chords at the beginning are an announcement of audacities to follow. The poetry is by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Frank LaForge, who studied with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna, was best known as an accompanist for Marcella Sembrich, Frances Alda, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and Lily Pons; his students included Marian Anderson and Lawrence Tibbett. “Hills” is a setting of an ecstatic ode to nature by Arthur Guiterman, who was known for his humorous poems.

—Susan Youens

© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation.

More Information:

One of today’s most imposing voices sings Strauss and Wagner, two of her specialties. “She brings a soaring opulence to this music,” says the London Sunday Times, “the tone sumptuous and rounded, the top notes gleaming and full.” But she also offers some surprises—witty cabaret numbers by Britten, and an intriguing selection of neglected American and British songs.

Christine Brewer, Soprano
CHRISTINE BREWER

Grammy-winning American soprano Christine Brewer’s performances are marked by her unique timbre—at once warm and brilliant—and vibrant personality, along with an emotional honesty reminiscent of the great sopranos of the past. Her range, golden tone, boundless power, and control make her a favorite of the stage as well as a sought-after recording artist.

Highlights of Ms. Brewer’s 2009–2010 season are numerous. She performs Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and James Levine, the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, and the Dallas Symphony and Jaap van Zweden; Britten’s War Requiem with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; and excerpts from Wagner operas with the BBC Philharmonic with Donald Runnicles, Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. In addition to premiering a new work by David Carlson with the Marin Symphony, she sings Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Jeffrey Kahane and the Colorado Symphony, as well as Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert. She also reprises her critically acclaimed portrayal of Lady Billows in Albert Herring at Santa Fe Opera. An avid recitalist, she will be presented throughout North America by such prestigious organizations as Cal Performances, Berkeley, Spivey Hall, University Musical Society, and the Schubert Club, among many others.

On the opera stage, Ms. Brewer is highly regarded for her striking portrayal of the title role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, which she has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Théâtre du Châtelet, Santa Fe Opera, English National Opera, and the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Earning critical acclaim with each role, she has performed Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the San Francisco Opera, Gluck’s Alceste with the Santa Fe Opera, and the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Paris Opera. Ms. Brewer has frequently collaborated with the greatest conductors, including Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Antonio Pappano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Shaw, and Leonard Slatkin.

Frequently sought after to sing great symphonic works, Ms. Brewer has sung with the philharmonics of New York and Los Angeles, as well as the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Boston, and Dallas. In Europe, she counts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and the Staatskapelle Berlin as regular partners.

Ms. Brewer’s critically acclaimed recordings of wide-ranging repertoire on the Hyperion, Naxos, Chandos, and Telarc labels have received and been nominated for many prestigious awards.

Craig Rutenberg, Piano
CRAIG RUTENBERG

Pianist Craig Rutenberg has collaborated with many of the world’s greatest vocalists and is recognized as one of the most distinguished accompanists on the stage today.

Having studied piano and interpretation with John Wustman, Geoffrey Parsons, Pierre Bernac and Miriam Solovieff, Mr. Rutenberg has appeared in recital with Denyce Graves, Sumi Jo, Harolyn Blackwell, Susanne Mentzer, Frederica von Stade, Angelika Kirchschlager, and Dawn Upshaw. He has also performed frequently with Thomas Hampson (with whom he performed at the White House during the Clinton administration), Ben Heppner, and Jerry Hadley, as well as Olaf Baer, Simon Keenlyside, and Stanford Olsen.

Mr. Rutenberg has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI/Angel, BMG/RCA, and Koch International. He has appeared repeatedly in concert on national and international television and radio, including numerous PBS specials.

Currently Head of Music Administration at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Rutenberg is Guest Coach at Gothenburg and Oslo operas. He has given master classes at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Pittsburgh Opera Center, Chicago Opera Theater, and the Vancouver Opera, as well as training workshops at the Washington Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Mr. Rutenberg has also worked at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera.

In addition to his teaching activities during the 2009–2010 season, Mr. Rutenberg appears in recital with Vivica Genaux, Maria Guleghina, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, and Thomas Hampson. In summer of 2009, he began recording the complete piano works of American composer and critic, Virgil Thomson.