After several decades of championing American art song, baritone Thomas Hampson refuses to let the major label slowdown hold him back. Instead, he’s started the Thomas Hampson Media label, and launched a full-out multimedia American song assault, as well.
Song of America II
Wondrous Free: Song of America II (THM 5432), his first recording on his label, showcases familiar and lesser-known American songs written between 1759 and 1982. The 22-song collection, which sidesteps Broadway, jazz, blues, and other popular idioms, is a fitting companion to EMI’s 2005 Hampson compilation, Song of America. But while that disc was drawn from three previous Hampson EMI releases, this CD seems composed entirely of new selections well-recorded in Berlin (with pianist Wolfram Rieger) and New York City (with Craig Rutenberg).
The recording also signals the start of Hampson’s 12-recital “Song of America” tour, which San Francisco Performances brings to Herbst Theatre on Sept. 30. A collaboration with the Library of Congress, designed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the first American song, it receives full whammy treatment on Hampson’s Web site. If you’re looking for a free iPhone Fan app, a downloadable InstantEncore recording of one of recitals, or an iTunes download of the CD — albeit in compromised sound that cannot convey the full beauty of Hampson’s special instrument — they’re merely part of what’s available.
One thing becomes clear on listening to the compilation: Americans sure are a sentimental lot. Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem Looking Glass River, isn’t necessarily weighted with sentiment, but John Alden Carpenter’s setting of it (1909) certainly is. As an antidote, three songs by John Woods Duke, all set in 1948 to text by E.A. Robinson, talk of suicide, nonconformity, and the call from the other side. Carpenter’s Richard Cory packs quite the wallop, especially to listeners sensitive to homosexual undertones.
Some of the songs, notably Shenandoah, Stephen Foster’s Hard Times, Charles Ives’ marvelous Memories, Leonard Bernstein’s A Simple Song, Sidney Homer’s General Booth Enters Into Heaven, and Frances Hopkinson’s raison d’etre for the project, My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free, will be familiar to American song devotees. A foursome by Paul Bowles, which renders Tennessee Williams surprisingly sentimental, and others by Elinor Remick Warren, William Grant Still, Edward MacDowell, and Jay Unger (to text by Cleo Laine) are less frequently encountered.
To everything, Hampson brings his signature mellifluous warmth and grace, often complemented by measured restraint. In comparison to live performances of five of the songs, recorded in Salzburg in 2001 and available in Orfeo’s two-disc Hampson set, I Hear America Singing, a bit of unsteadiness, a slight tendency to wobble under pressure, and increased effort and spread at the top of the range are evident. But the gravel heard in Hampson’s recent Macbeth portrayal for San Francisco Opera is absent, and the beauty remains. Listen to the gorgeous floated falsetto at the conclusion of Shenandoah, and the supreme loveliness of the soft singing in A Simple Song. There is much here to treasure.