Christian Steiner
Christine Brewer singing American song – it’s like Judi Dench in Shakespeare, or an Aaron Sorkin screenplay: it just doesn’t get any better. Forcing the restrained acoustic of the Wigmore to ring as though it were St Paul’s, and persuading a white-haired Friday-night crowd to whoop and clap between numbers until cut off by the next piano introduction, it’s hard to say whether Brewer’s voice or personality carries greater weight. Every bit the equal of the “glad, great-throated nightingale” she sang of, her repertoire may have been from a bygone era but there was nothing dusty about this recital.