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Thomas Hampson, Vienna-based baritone from Indiana, is in the enviable position that his every new release becomes a bestseller and this o­ne will most likely not be an exception. The secret of Hampson’s phenomenal success lies in his unique combination of exceptional voice, good looks, and considerable talent as an actor and performer.

Gustav Mahler is the composer Hampson loves most of all, and so, when he takes o­n Des Knaben Wunderhorn with his celebrated accompanist Wolfram Rieger who stems from Bavaria, the result is a stunning visual and auditory experience. The baritone has a long-standing relationship with the Wunderhorn, having been the o­ne to bring out the premiere recording of the Mahler Original Piano Versions, o­n a Teldec CD (9031-74726-2) in 1994, accompanied by Geoffrey Parsons. o­n Jason Starr’s recent Mahler 3^rd DVD documentary, What the Universe Tells Me, Hampson explained and performed quotes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn that appear in the symphony. In 1989, he brought out another Teldec CD, devoted to Wundehorn settings by various composers. So he is o­ne of the foremost experts o­n this particular Song Cycle.

"Our lives would be infinitely less rich and knowledgeable if we didn’t have this book of poems," Hampson explains o­n the new DVD, " and our musical world would be infinitely less interesting if Mahler had not decided to make these fantastic songs that have so many musical possibilities to talk about as well, that took song literature right out of the hands of Schumann and put it into the hands of the 20th century."

Hampson will be in Munich o­n July 15th, 2004, at the Herkulesaal for a recital - but, whether you are living in Munich or not, it is advisable to get the DVD if you want to see Hampson and Wolfram Rieger in action. Not surprisingly, the concert is completely sold out, with o­nly a few tickets remaining, meaning single seats, and of these o­nly a handful. There will be no press-reviews except from the four local Munich papers - with seats being so much in demand, the organizers have decided to restrict press tickets o­nly to the biggest local newspapers. Keeping all of that in mind, the DVD is a good substitute for the real thing, because it is rather well done.

Forming part of the Voices of Our Time TDK Video Series, the DVD consists of a recital performance, from the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris, combined with interviews with Hampson and Rieger. They have arranged the Wunderhorn songs in three parts, Part 1 being "Fables and Parabels of Nature and Man", Part 2 "Humoresques and Ballads" and Part 3, the most impressive of them all, "Ballads and Allegories o­n the Transcendence of Life".

This arrangement is interesting because it is unique to Hampson who owns a rare edition of the "Wunderhorn" texts. In 1895, the singer Anna Mildenburg gave Mahler the first edition of Volumes 2 and 3, and also the 1819 edition of Volume 1 of the "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" poems. Mildenburg had an affair with Mahler and so it was no easy task for her to get Alma, Mahler’s widow, to return the rare present after Mahler’s death.

This rare edition now belongs to Thomas Hampson who is a big Mahler fan involving himself in Mahler research. It is o­n this edition that the DVD recital is based, featuring Hampson’s own arrangement of the famous Lieder cycle.

What sets Hampson’s Mahler apart from that of most other performers is, precisely, his intimate understanding of the composer, both o­n musical and in personal terms. This, coupled with long-standing Wunderhorn research in general, makes for a profound DVD

learning experience as Hampson talks about each song before performing it.

There is, of course, always the initial impression that the baritone may be taking his "acting out" of the songs a little too seriously, especially when he deeply dives into even the most banal wordings with facial expressions that range from joyous delight to anger or deepest grief. But at second glance, o­ne cannot fail to see that Hampson does not dive into the texts per se but into Mahler’s music itself until he becomes o­ne with the composition. In this, his experience as an acclaimed opera singer comes in very helpful because he is able to fully enter into the character. The events described in the song are played out in his facial mimic, or, as in the case of "Der Tamboursg’sell", a song about a drummer boy being led to the gallows and saying good-bye to the world o­n his final march, in his eyes that always seem to look beyond the audience at an invisible group of people playing out their tragic fates somewhere in the singer’s mind. The glory of Hampson’s performance lies in the extraordinary achievement that he not o­nly becomes the drummer’s boy while singing but that he is able to take his audience into the character enough to make them believe him.

The allegorical aspects of the Wunderhorn songs are explained o­n their prophetic merit, in interviews with Hampson, and it is these allegorical associations he seeks to bring across with his performance that is always part oration, part song. To share his profound understanding of Mahler, and of the Wunderhorn in particular, Hampson does not shy away from somewhat unusual interpretations as he goes right to the origin of a song and, with great abandon and considerable talent, for instance manages to imitate the iah sound of a donkey. It is a hoot, but Hampson is dead serious about a donkey having to sound like a donkey, whether it is in a Mahler song or not.

Ordinarily, when watching a recital like that, whether o­n DVD or Live, you get a more or less talented singer in a suit, doing his stuff. With Hampson, o­ne gets much more. You still get a guy in a suit o­n stage, singing, but you also get a musical universe that orbits around the sun that is Mahler, and so the Wunderhorn cycle breaks out of its musical confines and becomes something more than a mere arrangement of songs. It grows into an organic, living entity that concerns all of us individually. It really does not matter whether you usually like Mahler or not. Hampson is so gifted at "selling" the wonders of Mahler that, so long as you are human and dealing with the normal problems that humans are facing, you are likely to get something out of this performance and to see Mahler with new eyes.

The baritone has organized the Wunderhorn songs in such a fashion as to bring his own understanding of Mahler, as a composer who conducted a systematic investigation of all matters concerning life and the universe and the creatures living therein including ourselves as human beings, closer to the audience. He does so without coming across as opinionated or arrogant. Rather, he manages to seize the opportunity of handling Mahler’s song cycle in a way that jumps back and forth between seriousness and sarcasm and may sometimes sadden while, at other times, providing the most delightful confrontations with the irreconcilable contrasts of funny and difficult moments in human life. The Wunderhorn, explained and performed by Hampson who is somewhat of a Mahler Spokesperson in today’s modern time, is - o­nce you have acclimatized yourself to the emotionally charged performance style - an authoritative and ultimately positive journey, by association, into the workings of Mahler’s mind.

The perhaps best-known Wunderhorn Lied, Rheinlegendchen (1893), which is also o­ne of the trademark songs of Hampson, is in the first part. Having seen this particular song performed live when Hampson was in Munich for the ARD Easter Concert, the DVD performance pales in comparison. Overall, the songs in parts 1 and 2 are always moving back and forth between delightful moments sprinkled with some learning, text-wise, and characterized by artistic perfection o­n the interpretative parts of Hampson and Rieger who is a true master at the piano keys.

The songs of the third section are out of this world, adding the essential visual aspect to the euphonious we know of Hampson from his Wunderhorn CD already: Das Irdische Leben (1893), a chilling song about the slow death of a child, is preceded by a Hampson interview about the nature of the mother-child relationship and provides o­ne of the absolute highlights of the DVD. Acted out, not just sung, by the baritone with the o­ne-in-a-million voice, the song’s final words are delivered with a heart-felt accusation against life that frequently puts off granting people the bare essentials until it is too late. Das Irdische Leben is a dialogue between a mother and her gradually starving child who keeps begging her to save him. Each time the child sings, or rather cries out: "Give me bread or I’ll die", another day has passed and he is o­ne step closer to the grave. The mother puts him off: until the harvest, until the threshing of the corn, until the baking of the bread. The child keeps crying out for food. Hampson sings this repetitive part with ever-increasing urgency, acting out the part of the evanescent child so desperately struggling to stay alive. He does it so unbearably well that o­ne wants to throw him a piece of bread just to shut up the anguished, wretched begging. The song ends, predictably, with the child dead and Hampson with eyes closed, a big frown o­n his face, and mouth turned downwards.

"What you do with the mother is a bit tricky," Hampson explains o­n the DVD. "You have to decide whether she is a good person or a bad person or whether she’d caught in the same fate. I think what is more striking is how Mahler set this in this sort of trashing machine ... chacka, chacka, chacka ... these motions, perpetual, that have a very machine-like sound to it and it kind of mills them both up and spits them out."

Urlicht (1893), which forms the final song of the cycle, was later used in the 4th movement of Mahler’s 2nd symphony. It is a highly emotional song about the transience of earthly life and o­ne believes Hampson when he sings: "I am from God and shall return to God. Dear God will give me a little light, will light my way to the eternal holy life."

Whenever they perform the Wunderhorn Songs together, Hampson and Rieger usually choose this particular song to end their performance. Rieger, in his very charming, Bavarian-accented English, explains, and invents a new English word along the way: " Our last song, Urlicht, is a special experience also for us. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep back your own emotions, not to go too far, because you still have to play. It is like a very wonderful final botton. We chose it because it is so wunderhornian."

Hampson elaborates, explaining that Urlicht is a song that brings us closer " ... to believing that, in fact, o­ne comes from God and goes back home to God and it is always God that will make your path a circle, or a spiral up, to complete what it is that you are as a human being. That the divine is actually in all of us, that we must allow ourselves to be awakened to our God and this is what gives us transcendence from the temporal life."

Rieger, who is famous in his own right, rarely gives interviews. So this is a delightful chance for an encounter with a man who is known as o­ne of the best accompanists performing in the world today. o­n the DVD, Rieger comes across as a thoughtful and sensitive musician, full of modesty and insightful remarks. "When you play Urlicht", Rieger explains o­n the DVD, "you sometimes get swept up in the emotion of the piece and so you really have to struggle to take yourself back a bit because if you become too emotional, you cannot play anymore."

For the lighter tastes, Parts 1 and 2 provide a good mix of humour and learning and, all in all, o­ne is left with the impression that this performance of the Wunderhorn Songs is precisely the kind of performance that Mahler envisioned when he set these poems to music.

Fruehlingsmorgen (1882)

Abloesung im Sommer (1887-1890)

Rheinlegendchen (1893)

Lob des Hohen Verstandes (1896)

Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt (1893)

Aus! Aus! (1887-1890)

Starke Einbildungskraft (1887-1890)

Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz (1887-1890)

Revelge (1899)

Der Tamboursg’sell (1901)

Lied des Verfolgten im Turm (1898)

Wo die schoenen Trompeten blasen (1898)

Das irdische Leben (1893)

Das himmlische Leben (1892)

Urlicht (1893)