The score of The Prophets, intended as the last act of The Eternal Road, was the last that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German, before he personally and professionally adopted the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and the Seven Deadly Sins to his Second Symphony. At the same time, he foreshadowed some of his soon-to-be-written works for Broadway.

In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the premiere’s recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing American theater song with the German Lied, Berlin with Brooklyn.

Thomas Hampson, America’s leading baritone and a champion of the art of classic song — poetry set to music — makes his Cedille Records debut with a program of songs by five composers of the early 20th century associated with the city of Chicago: Ernst Bacon, Florence Price, John Alden Carpenter, Margaret Bonds, and Louis Campbell-Tipton. All of them, Hampson says, “have distinguished themselves in history as great voices of the artistic American narrative.” Hailed as “an outstanding recitalist” by Grove Music Online, the much-honored international opera star, recording artist, and “ambassador of song” performs compositions based on poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet who became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hampson, whose discography includes more than 170 albums, including Grammy and Grand Prix de Disque award winners, is accompanied on Songs from Chicago by collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang, accompanist of choice for Chicago’s top singers and instrumentalists. The New York Philharmonic’s first Artist-in-Residence, Hampson also has been honored with a Concertgebouw Prize, Library of Congress Living Legends Award, and the Hugo-Wolf-Medal for outstanding achievements in the art of song interpretation, among many other awards.

REVIEW:

It goes without saying that Hampson's singing is gorgeous, and he is ably backed by Chicago pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. An excellent slice of little-known American art song.

– All Music Guide

With Serenade, Thomas Hampson's first album exclusively dedicated to French song, Mr. Hampson brings his passion for works by French opera composers to the PENTATONE label. Curated with the French Literature scholar Sylvain Fort and in a first collaboration with the Polish pianist Maciej Pikulski, the track listing includes romantic and introspective as well as humorous selections by Bizet, Chabrier, Chausson, Gounod, Magnard, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns, featuring texts written by some of France's most revered writers including Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Rosemonde Gerard, and others.

REVIEW:

There are many byways through the well-stocked garden of French song for those who want to explore further afield. Thomas Hampson has put together an imaginative programme that places just a handful of well-known songs along its path, including Chabrier’s jolly parade of ducklings in “Villanelle des petits canards” and Chausson’s hothouse “Le temps des lilas."

-- Financial Times (U.K.)