What a puzzlement Thomas Hampson is. This American baritone,
who will turn
forty-five in June, is at once a prodigiously gifted singer and an infuriatingly
pompous, aloof artist. On the operatic stage, his excesses might be
deemed virtues, along with his strapping, bluff physiognomy, but on the
recital platform his hectoring delivery, stiff gestures, and occasionally
rough timbre invite less compassion. (The baritone’s thrashing of
Schubert’s
Winterreise a couple of years ago still troubles the memory.) And yet
Hampson can just as easily remind us why he is so acclaimed: his crisp
diction, rich tone, and interpretive sensitivity rival any singer
concertizing today. So what’s a song lover to do when Hampson once more
alternates between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the concert hall?
Suffer and smile, one supposes, for Hampson provoked both pain and pleasure
at Segerstrom Hall on January 25, when he and the pianist Craig Rutenberg
interrupted an all-Mahler tour to give an Orange County audience a more
digestible program of songs by Schubert, Samuel Barber, several
lesser known
American composers, and, yes, some Mahler. The program opened with six songs
from Schubert’s Schwanengesang, and from the get-go Hampson postured,
showing off his big sound and crushing the music in the process. Convinced
that subtlety was of no importance, he restricted his dynamic range to mezzo
forte and louder. And even when he attempted feeling, in “Ihr Bild,” for
example, he sounded arch. He shamelessly milked the open vowels of “An Meer”