Hampson records "DKW" with himself singing every song!

[barry guerrero]

Czech this out, and be sure to look at the youtube clip. The Wiener Virtuosen are hand-picked from the Vienna Philharmonic. Hampson sings ALL of the songs himself, which must be kind of strange on the ones that are rather flirty and coquettish - stereotypically feminine in character. Anyway, I'm anguish to hear the results.

http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/single?PRODUCT_NR=4779289&SET_LANGUAGE=us

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

He did it with piano. Fischer Dieskau did it too with piano an with orchestra. Why not? Let's us not forget Mahler said in a letter in 1904 : ''all my lieder were designed to man voice".

[Berry]

He did it with piano. Fischer Dieskau did it too with piano an with orchestra. Why not? Let's us not forget Mahler said in a letter in 1904 : ''all my lieder were designed to man voice".

Hi Stürmisch 
Do you know in which letter Mahler stated this?

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

Hi Berry,
The letter is mentioned here:
http://gustavmahler.net.free.fr/us.html
go to KWL,comments from De La Grange.
I don't know which letter exactly it is. I will look for it in my DLG this WE;Could be long!

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

oh! i've got it. In fact it's a letter send  in may or june 1905 to Oskar Fried who thougt about adding  Mahler Lieder  to a performance of the second symphony in Berlin, whith the same soloists. But Mahler goes against that because he absolutely don't want feminine performers. "my songs are all destined to a man's voice. You could have, to sing them,their usual performer from here  ( Friedrich Weidermann )...."
this letter has been the property of H L De La Grange, then he offered it to Fischer Dieskau.
As a member of the Mahler Society of Geneve, i have the opportunity to attend  De La Grange's  conferences .if it's possible, i will try to ask him about this letter.
Hoping you can understand my strange english!
Regards
Mathilde

[barry guerrero]

I'm not saying that a man shouldn't sing the entire "DKW" himself. But, if you're going to perform the full orchestral version, AND you're going to be conducting the work yourself, why not hire a solid female vocalist for the songs where the text involved are clearly cast from a feminine perspective?  I like where they split the songs between a man and a woman, where the text is clearly a stereotypical dialogue between the two genders. Personally, I think it's boring to hear just one gender or the other.

[Roffe]

I'll definately second that. Every other song male, every other song female, and male-female dialogs where required. I think (very prejudistic) that I would have problems appreciating a male voice in for example 'Urlicht'.

[James Meckley]

I think (very prejudistic) that I would have problems appreciating a male voice in for example 'Urlicht'.

Do try to hear—if you haven't—Thomas Hampson's version of Urlicht with Geoffrey Parsons on piano. I think it's quite beautiful and I'd love to hear him do it within the context of the symphony.

James

[Roffe]

I'll definately have a go at it. I can't rule it out b4 I've tried, and, who knows, I might even like it.
 (after hearing it):
Quite intresting. I agree that it might be interesting to listen to it with full orchestra inside M2

[barry guerrero]

That's precisely why I think this business about Mahler allegedly preferring male voices is complete nonsense. If he had felt that way so strongly, he wouldn't have specified women for M2, M3, and M4. Hell, why not hire counter-tenors and boy trebles, and do all of M8 without women!?! .   .  .   I'm sure that a lot of what he expressed had a lot to do with just who the potential singers were at that very time. I'd rather have a good singer, regardless of gender, than have to deal with a lousy or so-so singer. Wouldn't you?

[Roland Flessner]

At the WFMT Mahler Immersion Seminar in October, Thomas Hampson made a cameo appearance. He was in town to sing "Macbeth" at Lyric; he had a performance that night and couldn't sing for us, but he talked for a while and answered a lot of questions. I'd have asked this, but someone beat me to it: Should any of the DKW songs be performed as duets? Hampson said absolutely not. He has performed some that way but didn't feel right about it and wouldn't do it again.

Apparently the practice started as a novelty and quickly became a tradition, even standard practice. It may have started with the Schwartzkopf/Fischer-Dieskau/Szell recording but I'm not 100 percent certain about that. Using both genders to perform DKW may be OK, but it appears that Mahler never intended any to be sung as duets.

[barry guerrero]

Yes, Hampson makes his argument pretty clear on the promo video, and obviously he's in the right. But on the other hand, I can't see any harm in dividing up the cycle between various singers of either/both genders. Chailly, in fact, uses three different singers. Clearly, "DKW" doesn't work in the same way as either "Die Schone Mullerin" or "Winterreise". It's both a song cycle, and a series of fully independent songs. The proof of that point is that it's almost always recorded in some new order that hasn't been used before on tape. Also, some of the songs exist in different keys as well. And, in spite of what Mahler himself might or might not have said, the duet business works pretty darn well on the new Markus Stenz "DKW". Ultimately, it's the results that count for me, and not the rhetoric. Regardless, I very much look forward to hearing Hampson's new recording of it.

[barry guerrero]

I've finally listened through this, and it's quite interesting. Predictably, Hampson is best in the songs about soldiering. It's rather bizarre and monotonous to put "Revelge", "Tambourgs Sell", and all of the other songs about soldiering, together in one big lump. It's also rather lame to end with a rather perfunctory performance of "Urlicht". But some songs do gain from the more "chamber" orchestra treatment (one each in the strings, except for two violins), such as "wo die schoenen Trumpeten blasen", and "das himmlische leben" (the original version of what eventual becomes the finale to M4). In no way would I recommend this over a solid "traditional" version, such as Szell, Bernstein, MacKerras, Chailly, Stenz, or Boulez (the Abbado is a complete snooze). But this would make a decent supplement to those. I like that Chailly uses a tenor in "Revelge" - that kind of makes the marching soldier more of a wind-up toy, and less a front-line warrior.