Hi
Here is a really good article on Thomas Hampson's recent master class at the
San Francisco Conservatory.
Close to 11 on this stormy night, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music was
still packed. Few left even now, in the fourth hour of Thomas Hampson's voice
master class — an event without a break. And now, a stir ran through Hellman
Hall. The quiet, well-behaved, fascinated audience suddenly became
transformed into a stadium crowd at the climatic moment of the home team's
playoff game. The crowd leaned forward collectively, rooting intensely for
Sarah Viola to hit the high G in Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade on pitch
and with the "right tone" Hampson has been hammering into her through a dozen
repetitions by now.
The ball landed in the end zone, a cheer went up almost simultaneously with
the voice, Hampson beamed . . . but the young soprano from Eugene rebuked
herself angrily, as if she carried the ball for the Ducks and some upstart
California team blocked her way. A hug from Hampson and the continued
applause didn't make much difference to Viola.
The gymnastics of singing
By the time she was done lifting a chair during the aria ("to help keep your
ribs out"), got rid of her shoes ("so you won't lean forward"), pressed her
cheeks together with the back of her hands ("to force the air upward, but
keeping your shoulders high, which you don't get if you use your palms"),
told to ignore the audience ("to hell with them"), and witnessed an intense
discussion between Hampson and pianist Steven Bailey about the sound of the
spinning-wheel — Viola was about as shell-shocked as a quarterback after a
dozen concussions. One thing though: she might not have realized, but
everybody else — cheering lustily — certainly has: what seemed impossible 40
minutes ago, her getting that note right, did happen. Enjoyable theater as
Terence McNally's Master Class may be, the real drama of a Meistersinger
working with students is far more intense and moving. Vocal master classes,
in my experience, are never about the "star" (if you listen to Callas'
classes, you will find none of the preening and carrying on McNally ascribed
to her), and this is especially true about Hampson.
Banter, with scary intensity
He cares passionately about the music and his young charges. On one hand, he
uses intelligent, self-deprecating humor (talking about his golf game, for
example) to put the young people at ease; on the other hand, he is involved
in the class with a serious, almost scary intensity. In fact, as the baritone
was circling Patricia Barboza (a soprano from Concord, originally from
Pakistan) working on Mahler's Ich atmet' einen linden Duft, he corrected her
posture, led her around, sang to her, towered over pianist Satoko Leisek,
pressed in first his own cheeks, then the singer's ("can you make your
fingers meet?") — a bizarre image sprang to mind. What Hampson resembles the
most at his most intense (which is pretty much all the way through class,
regardless of all the banter, smiles and laughter) and most effective, is a
Filipino faith-healer reaching into the guts of their "patients" with bare
hands, removing the "bad part" and seeing the sick rise and walk away in
glowing health. The big difference, of course, is that the Manila "surgery"
is a terrible hoax and Hampson's work is real, with lasting, beneficial
effect. Heather Clemens (from Moss Beach) and Elizabeth Amisano (from Elmira,
New York) went through the same hour-long, "instant fix" Viola and Barboza
experienced. In the heat and light of Hampson's furious involvement, they all
improved drastically, internalizing, and actually using basic information
they might have heard hundreds of times before. Here and now, the
manipulation took place in the guts.
Teaching senstitive to students' levels
Thursday's master class was both similar to and different from his Wigmore
Hall appearance I attended in November. In London, Hampson worked with
brilliant young singers, at the beginning of promising careers. In San
Francisco, the four sopranos were all more in need of a voice lesson than a
final push before appearing in Wigmore Hall themselves. The Hampson method
was the same, the transformation from weak to good much more noticeable, more
dramatic, more impressive. Impressive too is how little Hampson tries to
impress the audience, how he deflects the young singers' hero worship. At the
beginning of the class, the "star" disappears, the working-teacher taking his
place. He wants no attention on himself. Where should the attention be?
Hampson's mantra is simple and powerful: H — B — S. Over and over, he tells
singers and their accompanists, he pleads, he yells, he repeats: H to hear
what the opening note, the initial phrase will sound like. B to take a
breath. S to Sing. If you don't know where you want to go, you can't get
there, he says. Must hear what you want to sing. To the pianists, he repeats
all evening long: wait until you "hear" the singer hear the music inside, and
only then begin to play. He stops them: "Did you hear what she was hearing?"
Many times, when the answer is "no," Hampson says: "Exactly. Because she
didn't hear it either." Breath, obviously, is at the heart of the physical
end of the singer's triptych (the others are "the spiritual," meaning the
inexplicable magic of music and "the emotional"), and I have seen, here and
elsewhere, Hampson improve breathing technique "instantly," time and again.
He has some standard tricks — holding the chair is his favorite — and he has
a knack for explaining principles with great economy, but it is his
understanding of the students, his empathy and physical/total involvement
that makes the difference.
The poetic and the painfully physical
Along with the physical and practical, Hampson's emphasis on the text, the
poetry, the meaning, the idea — the sources of music seems to communicate as
well and as effectively. He tells the singer to breathe through the nose AND
mouth, while warning her that "German romanticism must never be sentimental .
. . it's all about release." Hear the music, he says, then touching her face:
"breathe into THIS space." Hampson's advice to focus on the beauty of the
scene depicted in the music is simultaneous with the observation that
"projection" is for physical objects, the task before the singer is to make
the voice vibrate the right way. Goethe's unhappiness with Schubert ("the
song is no longer the poem, it's something new and different") is mentioned
even as he is explaining that the voice goes sharp with too much air
pressure, flat because of muscle tension. Through it all, he urges the
singers — often in vain — to enjoy what they do, to acknowledge every little
success, "not just remember the inevitable failure . . . find the pleasure
that's inside the music you're singing." Hampson practices the
spiritual-emotional-physical synchronicity he preaches.
TinaO
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