The 2024/25 winter semester saw baritone Thomas Hampson give a master class on Mahler interpretation at the mdw in collaboration with the Center for Research on Gustav Mahler and Viennese Modernism. Hampson, doubtless one of the foremost singers of our time, met Daniel Ender for a chat in the cafeteria on Lothringerstraße.
In your Mahler interpretations, one always senses quite clearly how this composer means something very special to you on a personal level: to my ears, they seem to radiate a direct emotionality combined with intense reflection and depth as well as inflections that are entirely unique. What do you, as a singer, find special about Mahler?
Thomas Hampson (TH): That’s a big question! Mahler’s Lieder are like a diary of humanity, enormously illustrative even when they seem so naive. Singers always, I think, go onstage with invisible baggage: that period you spent studying and getting comfortable with a work, attempting to understand it, developing as an individual… And with Mahler, one aspect of such preparation that makes it so fascinating is how his ability to observe and portray people was so closely tied to the times in which he lived. You have to be familiar with the political reality of those days—and you also have to give some consideration to things like the era in which the songs found in Des Knaben Wunderhorn were compiled. I take all that onstage with me. The variety of it all is unbelievably illuminating, even as Mahler’s music itself is so directly accessible thanks to its melodic beauty.
There’s a lot of Mahler the person in his songs—as we know from his biography. How much of their own selves and their own histories can singers afford to put into interpretations if they want to maintain control over them?
TH: That’s a general question, but it’s a particularly weighty one where Mahler is concerned. In my opinion, the role we take on whenever we go onstage is always that of a representative. They’re not our songs; they’re Gustav Mahler’s. And Mahler himself would’ve said that they weren’t his but had simply come to him. So to start with, they were inspired by literary sources: first and foremost by Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and then especially by Friedrich Rückert. These sources initially moved him in the sense of a human experience of the self. Now, if a song—be it by Schubert, Schumann, or Mahler—arose from a personal experience and especially if you sing in the first person, you do, of course, have to really get into it. Just how you do that, what you imagine and end up portraying, is very individual. The prism for all of this is always the individual singer, which is a good thing. Contrary to what’s perhaps a fundamental misunderstanding in Lied singing, there is no one right way. I think we have to immerse ourself in a Lied’s thoughts and feelings simultaneously and then, as representatives, render these audible on the basis of our own selves.
In your master class, you’ve delved into all sorts of things: you’ve spoken about the cultural background as well as about how one can tell the story behind a song as a singer, and you’ve also been zeroing in on all of the musical aspects—from phrasing to the phonetic realisation of each individual sound. What role does shaping the text as such play in the interpretation of Mahler?
TH: His Lieder are enormously challenging in a technical sense, but you have to forget about technique entirely in order to enjoy true freedom when it comes to rendering Mahler’s world audible. A huge aspect here is, of course, the text. The sound that manifests thoughts via the metaphor of the words is extremely important in Mahler, as it is with all great Lied composers. We have to study and prepare this sound as precisely as possible. But an artist then needs to repeatedly free their head that it might be shown the way by their heart. And in Mahler, there’s an additional aspect that I always have to point out again and again in my teaching: his Lieder are incredibly illustrative. You could make a movie of every single one! Leonard Bernstein was once asked whether it wasn’t unfortunate that Mahler hadn’t written any operas, and his response was: Mahler wrote 50 of them! Every single one of his Lieder is an entire cosmos unto itself. They always deal with human existence in a way that’s one of a kind, that often seems quite simple and is always very accessible.
How much of this can one convey in a master class or, more broadly, in one’s teaching?
TH: In our seminar, we don’t have much time—but the idea is to lay out all of the aspects I’ve addressed. There are various approaches, here, including that of starting from the history of the Lied, which—building upon the foundation laid down by Schubert—experiences this huge culmination with Mahler, as well as the many other approaches I’ve just mentioned. We’re attempting to pursue this unbelievably exciting variety of interdisciplinary approaches together with the Mahler Center. A frequent misunderstanding is that a master class is just something where some famous singer comes along and teaches young people how to sing like he or she does—which is total nonsense! My job is to cultivate their understanding of physiological, psychological and intellectual, Germanistic, and historical aspects. I think that in any type of teaching, even when it’s confined to such a short period of time, Mahler’s songs represent an outstanding opportunity to move something forward in this learning process. The connections between our world and art, between emotion and ways of expressing things musically, and between all of this and the ways we have of allowing it to be heard are extremely important to me here.
Mahler is so directly accessible, but it’s precisely this apparent simplicity that necessitates a lot of work. I find this master class very stimulating, and I’m a huge supporter of the mdw’s Mahler Center to begin with. So I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be here as a guest artist and join with my Viennese colleagues—especially Mahler Center head Christian Glanz—in this exciting work, which also features numerous points of contact with the fantastic institution ExilArte (the mdw’s Center for Banned Music—Ed.). I think Vienna has a mission and a special responsibility that are being taken on with a lot of dedication here at the mdw. And my big, overarching goal would be continued cooperation with the other international Mahler institutions towards enabling Mahler to be experienced by as many people as possible.
