Music Reviews : Mack Sings Schubert Cycle in Long Beach

With so few American singers these days evincing ambition beyond the razzle-dazzle of opera, it is of much more than ordinary interest when one among them sets out to present his credentials as a genuine lieder singer.

Tenor Jonathan Mack took the stage at Cal State Long Beach Sunday night to do just that. Mack’s well-known artistic attributes--intelligence, musicianship, a voice of some security and flexibility (and one capable of variety in dynamics), and seriousness of purpose--are very much to the point for such an undertaking.

Although such assets don’t per se equal the capacity to plumb the depths of Schubert’s great song cycle “Die Schone Mullerin” right off the bat, Mack distinctly demonstrated graceful featherweight form and no obvious reason why he cannot grow steadily into this heavyweight artistic challenge.

Whether or not his model was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, he blustered where the German baritone blusters (“Das Wandern”), barked where he barks (“Mein!”--possibly goaded by pianist Michael Carson’s uncontrolled banging), and crooned where he croons (“Trockne Blumen”), all without the mastery of what is remarkable in Dieskau despite these idiosyncrasies.

With an uncommonly solid lower register and a ringing, somewhat stentorian top, Mack encountered no range difficulties. His soft singing doesn’t spin or float. He is at home with German texts. He consults the score.

Near the cycle’s end, when he had exhausted a repertory of stock tenorial gestures and just stood, allowing the music to flow through him with unobstructed intensity (“Die liebe Farbe”), then didn’t break the mood for “Die bose Farbe,” we glimpsed the considerable subliminal artistry yet to be mined.

For now, Mack’s performance of the cycle is a series of well-sung vignettes, not an eloquent arc of profound human expression. But this is a lifetime journey of self-awareness, well begun: stay tuned.

Pianist Carson fairly drowned his colleague in attentiveness, but his relentless emoting was an embarrassing distraction, quite at odds with Mack’s composed, dedicated demeanor.

Moreover, exuberant outbursts (“Ungeduld,” “Die liebe Farbe”) seemed to give Carson such difficulty that tempos and dynamics were adjusted to his limitations rather than the singer’s strengths.

Mack and Carson will perform the cycle in Hancock Auditorium at USC on March 16.