For most of its 20-year existence, Boulder’s MahlerFest has consistently attracted devotees of Gustav Mahler but generated little attention in the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area or broader classical-music world.
But in September 2005, the tiny, largely volunteer-run organization got its first taste of the big time. Its efforts on behalf of the composer earned it a prestigious gold medal from the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna.
Perhaps even more important, renowned baritone Thomas Hampson, himself a winner of a Mahler Society gold medal, agreed to appear as a soloist for this weekend’s presentations of Mah- ler’s 1909 song-symphony, “Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).”
“It’s the biggest coup in the history of this festival,” said Robert Olson, MahlerFest’s founder and artistic director. “Pros of that nature typically don’t want to take the chance of playing with anything but absolutely the top-rank, professional orchestras. It’s just too risky.”
Apparently unfazed, Hampson not only agreed to appear with the festival’s volunteer orchestra of professional and semi-professional musicians from across the country, he is also set to give a master class today and take part in a Saturday symposium on “Das Lied.”
Stan Ruttenberg, the festival’s president, met the singer in 1995 at a Mahler gathering in Amsterdam and suggested the idea of appearing at the festival. Ruttenberg raised the notion again during another encounter a few years later.
Hampson finally agreed to come to Boulder when Ruttenberg and Olson approached him after the Mahler Society awards ceremony.
“Stan and I both went up to Hampson and said, ‘Well, how about a two gold-medal ‘Das Lied’?’ Sort of in jest but also sort of hoping that it might work. And he said, ‘Why not?”‘ Olson said.
Speaking from Miami after a rehearsal with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, Hampson said the challenge was finding a slot on his schedule, which is usually dominated in January with opera productions.
“Since MahlerFest is always in January and always at a particular time, it had to be a season where, curiously, January was either recitals or a tour or something like that, and it simply happened this season for the first time,” he said.
This will be the festival’s second performance of “Das Lied,” a genre-busting set of six orchestral songs based on German free-verse translations of Chinese poems.
Mahler specified the solo vocal parts could be performed by tenor and either mezzo-soprano or baritone; it is typically presented using the male/female combination. But famed baritones such as Diet-
rich Fischer-Dieskau have shown that the
tenor/baritone version also can be successful.
Since Hampson first performed the work in February 1995 in Carnegie Hall with conductor James Levine and later that year in Salzburg with conductor Bernard Haitink, it has been a regular part of his repertoire.
“I do very much believe that (the combination) works, but I don’t believe that it works in the sense that it’s better than a mezzo,” the singer said. “As with most of Mahler’s vocal repertoire, it is all about who is singing it. Do you connect? And do you want to connect? Do you get it, and can you give it?”
Mahler (1860-1911) began work on the song-symphony in 1907 after his daughter’s death and the discovery that he was suffering from a heart ailment. It emerged as a profound meditation on life and death and a culmination of everything the composer had done before.
Hampson believes this music, rooted deeply in 19th-century German transcendental philosophy, does not shirk the dark sides of death but ultimately rises above them.
“I think he was one of the most alive human beings who could possibly be alive,” Hampson said. “I don’t think there was any (sense of) ‘It’s time for me to go’ or ‘I’m sick and I’m being relieved of this.’
“I don’t hear that, but I do hear him wrapping his arms around us and saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. Move on.”‘
Mahler’s music has been central to Hampson’s career since the mid-1980s. His first solo recital album in 1990 featured the composer’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” That same year, he collaborated with conductor Leonard Bernstein on two other Mahler song cycles.
“What has pleased me over the years is that I feel I have gotten more and more physically and mentally capable to simply live inside the world he creates,” Hampson said. “He is an extremely challenging composer, not just in the sense of, yeah, you’ve got to get your notes around this or your voice around that.
“But you’ve got to be able to be spontaneous in your thought … be able to think with him rather than try and catch up with him.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
Baritone Thomas Hampson, tenor Jon Garrison, MahlerFest Orchestra
Performance of Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde”|Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado at Boulder; 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday|$10-$40 |303-449-1343 or 866-464-2626 or ticketswest.com.
More MahlerFest
Other festival offerings|Hampson master class, Imig Music Building, 18th Street and Euclid Avenue, CU Boulder, 1 to 3 p.m. today; Chamber concert, Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts, 200 E. Baseline Road, Lafayette, 7:30 p.m. today; “Das Lied von der Erde” Symposium, Room 100, ATLAS Building, CU Boulder 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday|Free |303-447-0513 or mahlerfest.org.
