The Art of Singing a Story

Bryn Terfel is the current sensation on the British vocal scene, and with a powerful promotional assist from his recording company, he may even become an international celebrity. The huge Welshman (he’s built like an NFL tackle) is also one-third of a triumvirate of hunky young baritones--the others are Boje Skovhus from Denmark and American Thomas Hampson--who are engaged in reviving the art song as popular entertainment.

Vaughan Williams’ setting of “Songs of Travel,” the wonderfully musical poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, is one of the tests by which a British singer is measured, and the 29-year-old Terfel has recorded them (Deutsche Grammophon 445 946) to the ecstatic delight of the British critics.

To my mind, however, the Brits are rushing things--and Terfel--perilously. This is an interpretation in the making rather than a finished product, lacking above all the quality of intimacy, of sharing a story rather than imposing it on listeners through force of will, and volume.

In the opening, “The Vagabond,” Terfel and his pianist, Malcolm Martineau, strike the right macho attitude, as their man trudges defiantly through the mud, a Kiplingesque foil for the lovelorn wanderer of Schubert’s “Winterreise.” But Terfel quickly throws off the restraints imposed by music and text to strut his stuff. He begins to belt. Then, to show that he’s not merely a belter, he sings so softly that he has you reaching for the volume control.

In the more reflective, tender songs that make up the rest of the nine-part set, the singer maintains his high-pressure tactics, offering arena-size performances of vocal chamber music.

Let’s see what Terfel can do with the same material in a decade. He’ll barely be 40, after all.

Skovhus, three years Terfel’s senior, is a more polished interpreter. Consider a pair of recent Sony Classics recitals: the Schubert Lieder collected as “Schwanengesang” and five additional songs from the end of his life (66835), and Hugo Wolf’s settings of poems of Joseph Eichendorff, with four songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold as encores (57969). The excellent pianist in both cases is Helmut Deutsch.

Although Skovhus seems to possess a voice as large as Terfel’s, he uses his with greater discrimination, matching tone and volume to sentiment with impressive naturalness. He seduces us into the composers’--and poets’--worlds.

Thomas Hampson, with his warm, pliant, high baritone, is the most artful of the three recitalists, and a superb program-builder. In a performance recorded live at the 1993 Edinburgh Festival, with the late Geoffrey Parsons as the elegantly attuned pianist (EMI 55147), the agenda consists of two cycles central to the repertory, Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” and Schumann’s “Dichterliebe,” along with six rare Heine songs by Grieg, and unfamiliar settings by Franz, Loewe and Schumann of poems of Robert Burns in German translation.

Hampson, at 39 the trio’s senior member, is in superb voice and serves as an urbane, relaxed guide through this small universe of Romantic song.

Finally, that incomparable old pro, German tenor Peter Schreier, still going strong at age 60, adds to his vast discography a collection of songs by one of the lesser lights of German Romanticism, Conradin Kreutzer (Orfeo 374 951).

Many of the poems here, by Schiller, Goethe, Uhland and Muller, are more familiar in settings by Schubert and other masters. Kreutzer’s simpler, folk-like reactions, while hardly contemptible, show us the difference between inspired genius and workmanlike professionalism.

It’s fun comparing, say, Schubert’s version of “Die Post” (from “Winterreise”), with its heartbreaking modulations and dynamic shifts, mirroring its protagonist’s alternating between hope and despair, with Kreutzer’s blunt, black-and-white version.

Schreier, with pianist Thomas Hans, knows the difference as well as any singer alive, and he’s clearly enjoying himself while making his gently didactic points.