Customer Reviews

Robert Schumann: Lieder

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I've heard Thomas Hampson -- live, on CD, on DVD -- sing so superbly, with such expressive control of dynamics, that I'm reluctant to be critical of anything he performs. However, this recording of Robert Schumann 'piano-Lieder' with texts by Justinus Kerner and Adalbert Chamiso is disappointingly "hit-and-miss". The fundamental problem is the suitability of Hampson's voice and vocal technique to the music per se. Hampson is a baritone, and a darkish baritone to boot. On the songs that lie within his best range, he's magnificent. Unfortunately, many of these songs, especially the "Five Early Songs", require him to stretch into his 'tenor' register, and his timbre becomes strained, at times even unpleasant. In several passages, he needs to 'break' into his falsetto; what emerges is painfully close to a coyote yelp. I'm suppose I'm risking censure, but I have to say that the Five Early Songs are 'generic' at their best, and demand sheer beauty of timbre to be worth hearing at all, and Hampson did himself and us no favor by placing them first on this CD.

The Five Lieder based on Danish poems by hans Christian Andersen, translated to german by Chamiso, suit Hampson's vocal personality better. They are essentially 'rude blasts' of Romantic Angst, despair and madness, requiring the sort of stagey earnestness that Hampson does very well. The piano 'setting' of the less obviously strophic vocal line is more expressive in these pieces also, though I find the timbre of Geoffry Parsons's piano at times too glassy. The last two tracks on the CD are later compositions from op. 127 and 142, both speaking of the singer's "solace" in music. Frankly, Schumann's setting of the poems scarcely suggests solace, consolation, or even conciliation to my ears. Both pieces are harshly dramatic, and Hampson's fiercely rhetorical delivery serves Schumann's defiant music admirably ... as long as you ignore the words.

The Twelve Poems of opus 35 are roughly half successful and half unfortunate, largely depending on their suitability to Hampson's range. The good ones are good enough, for this listener, to make the others listenable. I won't declare my judgment song by song; I'll leave that open to your ears, dear listener, in case you are enough of a Schumann devotee to buy this CD despite my half-hearted endorsement of it.

No current American singer -- and precious few from the past -- has established a career in German art song to the extent that Hampson has. He began early, winning praise and prizes for a series of recordings on Teldec. This is a reissue of one of the most arcane, since it contains the rarely heard Kerner-Lieer Op. 35 and the even rarer Andersen Lieder Op. 40. I found no notable songs in the latter group, but the Kerner Lieder, while not as inspired as Schumann's four famous song cycles (Dichtrliebe, Frauenliebe und lebel, and the two Liederkreis Op. 24 and 39), still deserve a listen.

Fischer-Dieskau dominates in Lieder, of course, and he made a wonderful recording of the Kerner-Lieder when he was around thirty, in 1954 (recently brought to CD by Audite), yet Hampson exhibits the same abilities at the same high level: he's fresh, direct, in perfect technical command, and persuasive with the text. As a native speaker, F-D's German carries more nuance and feeling. Still, Hampson's youthful voice is thrilling, and Geoffrey Parsons was a better accompanist than Gunther Weissenborn for F-D.

In sum, this is a fairly arcane recording, definitely not the place to start if you don't know Schumann's songs, but a treasure for lovers of lieder as an art.