For Christine Brewer, there’s something deeply personal about Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs.””My first encounter with the songs came when I was about 19 years old,” said the Grammy Award-winning American soprano. She’ll perform the work with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra tonight and Saturday.
“I heard Heather Harper sing with the St. Louis Symphony, and I was hooked. I immediately brought the songs to my voice teacher at the time, who very wisely said that I was too young for them . . . that I lacked enough life experience to do them justice.
“For example, the first song — ‘Spring’ — expresses that exuberant feeling we have when we’re waiting for spring to come. There’s a great orchestral outburst of joy — the kind of joy that, I later realized, someone who has only experienced 20 springs in her life can’t quite understand.”
But Brewer did start reading and learning the poetry on which the songs are based — translations of Hermann Hesse’s “Spring,” “September” and “Going to Sleep,” and “At Sunset” by Joseph von Eichendorff. She also listened to different interpretations of the songs by such vocal greats as Jessye Norman, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and others.
“Many of the interpretations I listened to over the years, some 20 or 30 of them, are quite serious, almost maudlin,” said Brewer. “But I think of the songs as celebratory. Reflective, yes, even bringing tears to your eyes. But not sad.”
She first performed the songs in 1993 in Bournemouth, England; she also performed the songs with the symphony in 2001 under the direction of conductor laureate Marin Alsop. All told, Brewer has sung the collection more than 70 times with 40 orchestras around the world.
“My interpretation of these pieces has changed over time,” she said. “A big shift in my life happened around 12 years ago, when my mother was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She was only 61, and we knew there was no cure — only a horrible outcome. Watching her vibrant personality — her life — just eke away as she became slowly paralyzed totally altered my perspective.
“The second song, ‘September,’ is probably my favorite because it speaks to the last rose of the season dropping its leaves in the garden. It reminds me of my mother sitting by a window in her home in Boston, watching the last autumn leaves fall to the ground.
“So there’s a sense of nostalgia in my interpretation. A knowing that winter — death — is imminent.”
In 2006, seven years after her mother’s passing, Brewer recorded the songs with Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. “There’s just nothing more beautiful,” she said.
Brewer, who is on a recital tour with a few symphony performances thrown in for good measure, is also a passionate music educator.
“I started out as a K-12 music teacher,” she said. “In the little town of Lebanon, Ill., where I live, I work with sixth-grade students. I keep in touch with them via e-mail or my travelogues. And I write a column every once in a while in the Lebanon Advertiser, mostly about the cities I travel to and my cultural experiences there.”
Brewer also is active on Face book, where she answers questions from aspiring young singers. “It’s a way to keep the conversation going beyond a one-time masterclass here or there.”
In addition to the Strauss songs for soprano and orchestra, the CSO will round out the program with Beethoven’s overture to “The Creatures of Prometheus” and Brahms’ sonorous Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68.
