The curious title of this album, the 100th by the wonderful soprano
Carolyn Sampson
, comes from
Leonard Bernstein
's
I Hate Music
, one of the
Five Kid Songs
he wrote in 1943; the
but I like to sing ...
album title is the consequent to the song's title.
Sampson
perfectly catches the wit of this song, which is certainly not only for children, and she is among the few non-American singers who can do a persuasive American accent with a full retroflex "r."
indicates that while the program is not autobiographical, "it is personal, and I've chosen [the songs] because they reflect some of the ways in which music heightens our emotions, eases our pain, deepens our love." She goes on to say that these powers of music are especially needed at the current troubled historical juncture. All of this may be quite true, yet after hearing the album, one may think that it has a second purpose. Among all the beautiful voices on the scene in 2023, no other is as versatile as
's.
Bernstein
is just the beginning. The program ranges from German to French to English, from chestnuts (
Gounod
Ave Maria
) to quite rare items (the
12 Chants de Bilitis
by
Rita Strohl
, a fascinating comparison with
Debussy
's settings), from humorous to philosophical, from
Schubert
to the late
Kaija Saariaho
. It all hangs together miraculously, leaving the listener with the impression that
is indeed in touch with deeper currents. This is indeed a joyous and fitting summation of the career to date of one of today's great sopranos, with much more to come. ~ James Manheim