MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: To The Soul: Thomas Hampson Sings The Poetry Of Walt Whitman

TO THE SOUL is a collection centered on a poet rather than a composer. Walt Whitman's words have inspired over a thousand song settings, whose range is suggested here. Towering behind them all is the figure of Whitman himself, the excited voice of an emergent nation, champion of individual freedom and spirituality, lover of nature, at once the most public and personal of poets. Thomas Hampson has chosen an intriguing recital, filled with names both familiar and obscure.

Among the rarities is the quotationally evocative "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors" by Henry Thacker Burleigh - a student of Dvorák and one of the first conservatory-trained African American composers. The program also includes the provocatively plain setting of "As I Watched the Ploughman Ploughing" by Philip Dalmas, for whom we have not even a birth date. There are contributions from Ralph Vaughan Williams, Paul Hindemith, Ned Rorem and even Kurt Weill, but the highlight is Leonard Bernstein's "To What You Said," a moving statement culled from an unpublished Whitman letter and one of the great American art songs. Hampson sings throughout with the art which conceals art, beautiful, but just right. (AllMusic)

"The performances throughout are exceptionally fine, intimately and subtly expressive but opening out nobly to expressions of passionate idealism." Gramophone