Review of Hampson and Sidorova – material style and wind of the ship | Classical music

SChubert’s Winterreise – the great psychodrama of the composer – ends badly. Der Leiermann presents a fascinating vision of a blind man. Alone in the countryside he sings his haunting songs, luring the narrator to him – perhaps even to his death? A haunting melody, with a constant drone, begs for colors that only the piano can express. Perhaps that was the seed of this unusual collaboration between veteran US bass-baritone Thomas Hampson and Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova.

You can see the ideas that exchange the piano accordion and the frames of Schubert with the music of Kurt Weill and the tango by Piazzolla: this is a street song that is washed and hair washed, invited to a salon, a cabaret, an opera house.

At least, that’s what I thought was happening. Without any programming documents, scripts or translations, things became secondary to the movements that started to seem like a waste of time. The concerto was called Schubert’s Winterreise but what we got was changed: a heavy Gute Nacht, piano solos that are now grapey, bad accordion; Frühlingstraum very interesting; Lindenbaum’s wonderful mono-mood. Sidorova’s accordion said everything the piano could but with a little more subtlety, as Hampson stepped through, allowing the voice to shine through the quiet passages where the voice couldn’t.

The program of less than 70 minutes didn’t need time, but later we got the pieces of the party: two solos by Sidorova – a beautiful interpretation of Piazzolla’s Chau Paris and the reluctance of Revelation by contemporary composer Sergey Voytenko. The highlight of the evening, everyone showed what Sidorova and the accordion can do in their natural environment.

Hampson turned home again in the second half with a succession of Kurt Weill’s cuddlier songs. Here we see the showrunner, rocking, toe-tapping and dancing his way through Speak Low, It Never Was You and Westwind. Mack the Knife (singed in German to do it all) had a lot of bite, but this Weill was as tough as Ralph Lauren, just not as cute. Encores of Sway and Night and Day entertained the crowd, but did little to set the tone for the late-night cruise.