Saturday, October 04, 2003

By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

Add a "G" to the end of the last name of singer Thomas Hampson and you have the perfect blend of a man and his career. One of the foremost American orchestral baritones, Hampson lives and breathes singing. But "Hampsong" also describes his new Web site and his soon-to-be-launched international educational project.

Later this month, www.hampsong.com will expand significantly to spread appreciation of singing around the world. "My personal passion is that there can be a great understanding of personal psyche through song," Hampson says. "I created a foundation for this called Hampsong."

Meant "to augment the live experience," the site will have downloadable files, a listening library, teaching aids, radio spots and multimedia biographies. "It is a platform for cross-cultural understanding of one another," says Hampson, 48. "I think we would understand the French better if we knew their songs; the Austrians would know us better if they knew our songs."

	Hampson part of trio of concerts The Pittsburgh Symphony has scheduled a varied trio of concerts this weekend, all led by Mariss Jansons in Heinz Hall, Downtown, and all with slightly different programming. Last night: Andras Schiff, piano, and Dvorak's Piano Concerto; Schumann's Symphony No. 1; Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Tonight at 8: Thomas Hampson, baritone. Mahler, "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer)" and "Rheinlegendchen" from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn"; Schumann's Symphony No. 1; Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Tomorrow at 2:30 p.m.: Andras Schiff. Dvorak's Piano Concerto; Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4; Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Tickets are $19.25-$65.25; call 412-392-4900.

The concept was born from the American baritone's tours around the world and his experience living in Vienna, where he now resides. "The European concertgoer is dumbfounded by the depth of political and personal expression that originated by American writers," he says.

Hampson wants more people to "get" singing and how deeply songs of any culture penetrate lives. "What motivates me is that when you actually take people [to a] concert, they will say they enjoy it," he says. "We are just not trying hard enough."

It's hard to imagine Hampson working much harder. In addition to a full recital, operatic and orchestral schedule, he has been a contributing editor for the "Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Gustav Mahler" and has been active building the new online project. The time devoted to his Web site, in fact, may result in the baritone trimming some of his singing career back. "I don't want to cut back, but the first place to cut back will probably be with operas, since they are time consuming," he says. "New productions will probably go." He also wants "to get back to recital singing."

The Hampsong project is the latest manifestation of what the singer has been doing for years onstage: bringing people closer to classical music through warm and sensible singing. A Hampson performance feels more like a living room conversation than a full-fledged concert, so comfortably and unpretentiously does text roll off his tongue. "I play golf -- I am a fairly normal guy who happens to be a weird artist," he says.

Tonight -- yes, for one night only -- Hampson will visit Heinz Hall for the first time since he gave a seasoned and radiant reading of Mahler and Copland songs in 2000. This time, the program is Mahler's "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer)," and "Rheinlegendchen" from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn."

"It makes my heart soar when I sing Mahler," says Hampson, with the sort of matter-of-fact finality of a preacher discussing the existence of God. "We are often very derogatory to folk poetry, but it is more profound than we think it is."

For "Songs of a Wayfarer," Mahler used existing folk texts and added to them. "He looked at the text from the folk tradition as blocks of stone that he would chisel a new entity from," Hampson says. Deane Root, a music professor at the University of Pittsburgh and director of its Center for American Music, adds, "Mahler used poems that had connection to folk tales and sit in that juncture between art and folk."

Hampson has been an advocate for equating folk and art music his entire career, what his bio calls the "art of song." "I am a big fan of folk music in the first place," he says. He was the host of a performance documentary on the composer Stephen Foster filmed at the Stephen Foster Memorial in Oakland in 1996, he recorded a disc, "American Dreamer," of Foster tunes in 1992 on Angel, and in 1998 organized the New York Town Hall concert, "I Hear America Singing," with Dawn Upshaw, Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley and others, broadcast on PBS's "Great Performances."

"He is known for his scholarship in Mahler and German lieder," says Root. "His contribution in the folk field is mostly with Foster. He approaches Foster as an art song composer, recognizing that Foster carefully crafted songs that appear to be simple."

Mahler did much the same thing with "Songs of a Wayfarer." Composed in late 1884, Mahler wrote four songs for voice and piano. The impetus for the melancholy cycle was a relationship with a soprano he had met in Berlin. Two of the songs found their way into Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and he later orchestrated all of them.

The temptation might be to view the later orchestrated renditions as the more definitive versions of the songs, but Hampson strongly cautions against it. "What you should never do is assume that the same themes that come up in his symphony, that these next permutations are the final ones," he says. "To go back and apply those markings to the songs is wrong.

"Mahler was serious about his songs. They are by no means worksheets for later symphonic expressions. ['Songs of a Wayfarer'] was an extraordinary expression by him at a young age (mid-20s). He was ahead of his time to be writing his own text to his songs."

E-mail this story   Print this story