Hampson warms Spokane’s holidays
Spokane claims Thomas Hampson as our city’s contribution to the starry world of international classical music. To hear the “why” behind this local pride, you only had to be in the near-capacity audience Saturday for Hampson’s “Home for the Holidays” concert.
Hampson was joined by his frequent pianistic partner Craig Rutenberg in a magnificent demonstration of the art of song – just two men and some very beautiful music for two hours, 21 songs covering two centuries. This was the last of the Spokane Symphony’s gala events showing off The Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox.
Hampson’s reputation as an opera star was demonstrated only glancingly in his moving performance of Wolfram’s aria “O du mein holder Abendstern” from Wagner’s “Tannhaeuser.” But the evening was really about piano-accompanied songs, of which Hampson is an unparalleled master.
The concert began with three songs by Schubert that included Hampson’s chilling account of the abandoned, hallucinating lover, “Der Doppelgaenger.” The emotional power of this short song tests any singer’s and pianist’s concentration with its slow-moving chords and mounting melodic tension. The effect was gripping.
More classic songs by Liszt and the Wagner aria followed before Hampson turned his attention to American songs. The baritone showed how songs by American composers represent “a diary of who we were and are as Americans.” Hampson’s spoken program notes had a nonchalant wit that veneered the deep thought and scholarship that went into his choices and how he performed them.
The songs of Stephen Foster are often taken for granted or, worse, condescended to. But for Hampson, Foster is the first great American song writer. His and Rutenberg’s performance of “Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway” about love and loss was gentle and simple but showed Foster’s roots in the melodies of bel canto opera and the harmonic richness of Chopin’s piano music.
Hampson chose two war-related songs (“for obvious reasons,” he said) as centerpieces for the first half of Saturday’s recital: Henry T. Burleigh’s “Ethiopia Salutes the Colors” from the Civil War and Charles Ives’ “In Flanders Fields” from the aftermath of the First World War. Both are emotionally highly charged, the first with expectation and elation, the second with anger and irony. Hampson’s operatically conditioned sense of drama served both songs well.
After intermission, the mood changed. After a poignant unaccompanied performance of “I Wonder as I Wander,” the set shifted to songs from Broadway and movie musicals. No disappointments here. Hampson clearly loves and respects Irving Berlin (“White Christmas,” of course), Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. He treats their songs with the same elegant care as he does with songs by Schubert or Liszt. But he sings with the unaffected ease of a great Broadway performer.
Porter’s saucy “Two Little Babes in the Woods” alone would have been worth a trip out on a cold night. Hampson and Rutenberg warmed the songs and the evening.