Celebrations in Song: Christine Brewer and Craig Rutenberg at Tannery Pond, by Seth Lachterman
"When I have Sung My Songs to You"
An Evening of American Music
Tannery Pond Concerts, Season 2011, Concert III
Gian Carlo Menotti: Canti Della Lontananza
Alan Louis Smith: Vignettes: Letters from George to Evelyn based on correspondence of a World War II Bride
Virgil Thomson: Piano Portraits (solo piano),”My Long Life”
Charles Ives: Circus Band, At the River, Memories
Ernest Charles: “When I Have Sung My Songs To You”
A. Walter Kramer: “Now, Like a Lantern”
Harold Arlen: “Happiness is a Thing Called Joe”
Christine Brewer, soprano
Craig Rutenburg, piano
A vague sense of déjà vu pervaded the evening. A little more than a year ago, I attended a Memorial Day concert at Tannery Pond (reviewed here) to hear the remarkable Brentano Quartet perform Britten, Schumann and Beethoven. Later on that season,mezzo- soprano Vivica Genaux with Craig Rutenberg performed the little known works ofPauline Viardot. Tannery’s Independence Day concert seemed to conflate those experiences with a suite of reflective and commemorative American offerings, some of which being quite obscure, with a reappearance of Mr. Rutenberg this time featuring Christine Brewer, one of the great operatic voices of our time. Remembrance, subtly woven throughout the program, began with a celebration of the centenary of Menotti’s birth. Later, Ives’s songs captured the passing of small-town American innocence. Virgil Thomson’s witty caricatures remind us of our friendships; and finally, in Alan Smith’s song cycle, the loss of life and love in the time of war is vividly portrayed.

