THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 27, 1995 TAG: 9504270329
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music review
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Singing can make speech serve a higher purpose. And baritone Thomas Hampson is that rare singer with the brains to understand the words, the heart to know the music and the ability to share them both.
Hampson, one of the world's most sought-after singers, appeared in recital Tuesday at Hampton University's Ogden Hall. Throughout his program he displayed a winning mix of lofty art and genuine communication. With an imaginatively assembled program, a likeable manner and a forceful but finely calibrated voice, he captivated both discerning and casual listeners.
Hampson's partner was pianist Craig Rutenberg, a guest professor at the Eastman School of Music who appears as fortepianist with Hampson on a recording of ``The Marriage of Figaro.'' Their hearty late-Romantic program made intriguing connections between German songs of Grieg and Mahler and English songs by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and Walter Damrosch.
Hampson's diction was so clear that you could have taken dictation even if you didn't know the language. He sang with a full, warm, uncluttered voice that expanded greatly in loud passages. He brought it down to a gentle softness with the ease of one spreading frosting on a cake. His soft phrases were perfectly formed, his changes of mood precisely inflected.
In Grieg's Goethe setting ``Zur Rosenzeit'' (In the time of roses), Rutenberg and Hampson intensified a simple melody with just a hint of hesitation. A group of Mahler's ``Des Knaben Wunderhorn'' (The Youth's Magic Horn) songs were as involving as tiny operas.
The cuckoo and donkey impersonations in ``Lob des hohen Verstands'' (Praise of lofty judgment) were charming, but the sturdy, boots-stomping-in-the-village-green rhythm was truly infectious. Hampson closed the first half of the recital with ``Das himmlische Leben'' (The heavenly life), a song best known in its soprano form as the final movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony. With the lower baritone voice, the piece loses a little of its floating quality, but Hampson sang with benevolent delight at the dancing maidens in this vision of heaven.
Hampson has championed Barber's songs, which offer harmonic precision and small surprises in their melodies. This selection served to demonstrate Hampson's smooth legato, whether in the simple tune of ``With rue my heart is laden'' or the skips of ``In the Wilderness.'' Barber's bombastic Joyce setting ``I hear an army'' hewed to the military theme of the Mahler songs and Walter Damrosch's ``Danny Deever.''
Hampson's only dim moments were a couple of upper-register passages in the Grieg songs, a memory slip in ``Danny Deever'' and some overly caressed soft phrases in ``Shenandoah'' and Copland's ``The Boatmen's Dance.'' His encores were Copland's setting of ``Long Time Ago'' and Stephen Foster's wonderful ``Beautiful Dreamer.'' In the sweetest moments, Hampson finished a phrase and looked - cheekbones lit - into the distance. If we're lucky, this is a sight we will come to know well in the next decades. by CNB