What a tour de force the first LIEDER ALIVE! master workshop program was! For two evenings exclusively devoted to German Lieder, Thomas Hampson, the master teacher, captured the audience at the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and reminded us what an honor, fun, and hard work a master class can be. It is not just the power of music. And it is not just the poetic, romantic nature of the German Lieder. It is the privilege of witnessing and taking part in a unique learning experience where music, poetry, anatomy, and discipline are intertwined and inextricably bound together. It is about the master teacher’s generosity of sharing years of musical experience and passionate work with the younger peers. It is about the openness, the availability, and the empowering vulnerability a student possesses while being coached in public. It is, finally, about the indescribable conspiring intensity and collective gratification that is formed among the participants, master teacher and audience when a singer like Katherine Tier removes each one of the blocks that prohibit the air moving through her nasal passages reaching the potential she has. And miracolo, miracolo! – she becomes a cylinder where all ribs are facilitating legato. Don’t forget, “voices resonate, do not project.”

Hampson, like the wizard he is, tricks, entertains, puts his nervous students to ease while working on their posture and assisting them to unlearn physical pre-established patterns. He broke the habitual breathing through the mouth of the baritone Ferris Allen by offering him a glass of water. “Sniff it, it is a very good wine.” “Now hear the music, breathe (sniffing the wine) into it and then sing.” He approaches German Lieder through a deep understanding of the text and bombards the student with anecdotal information regarding the poet, the composer and the epoch. “It is not so much about what the German Romantics have to say to us today, it is rather about whether we are able to understand them.”

Hampson is a great teacher to work with, an inspiring coach, and a man of many words. His unprecedented energy and seductive presence on stage combined with the artistic sincerity and unpretentious erudition unsettled the notion that “a lazy tenor is a very rich baritone” and replaced it with that of a scholar, musicologist, literary critic, singer, uninhibited performer and most importantly a giving teacher who affirms that “discipline is getting rid of crap.”

And let’s not forget the LIEDER ALIVE! Program Director Ms. Bernstein, the untiring and impeccable force behind this remarkable event, who no matter what — to paraphase Hampson’s words — “keeps Lieder buzzing.” Bernstein’s artistic vision was evident in the brilliant selection of all five participants: Heidi Melton (soprano), Ferris Allen (baritone), Marcelle Dronkers (soprano), Kittinant Chinsamran (baritone) and Katherine Tier (mezzo-soprano). Her passionate belief in German Lieder and the need of a specialized master workshop program devoted exclusively to this important artistic genre offers a unique opportunity — in the Unites States — to the public and enhances San Francisco’s reputation as an international cultural center. As Hampson ended the night, “Maxine, you did a good thing. Thank you.”

LIEDER ALIVE! will go live again in June 2009 with Marilyn Horne as the master teacher.