Under the artistic direction of baritone Thomas Hampson, the annual Heidelberg Lied Academy, as part of the International Music Festival Heidelberger Frühling, transforms the German city into an international meeting point for the Lied.
Ranging well beyond the confines of the traditional master class, the Lied Academy’s aim is to give young singers a variety of tools for well-informed, text-based song interpretation. The credo of the Lied Academy, reflective of Hampson’s passionate belief in the uniquely expressive power of song, is that singers should tell stories through song, and thus create richer performances through those multi-layered stories.
In this/these master class/es, American lyric baritone Thomas Hampson works with select Lied Academy fellows on their interpretations of French and German song, and how to express the stories that these songs tell on a deeper level.
The Lied Academy is part of the Musikfestival Heidelberger Frühling, one of Europe’s most exciting concert festivals, taking place every spring for 5 weeks. No city could make a more appropriate home for the Lied Academy than Heidelberg, a place that epitomizes the era that produced the greatest flowering of Lieder: German Romanticism. The Heidelberger Frühling has been a strong supporter of Lied since its founding in 1997.
