Baritone Thomas Hampson is tall, handsome and gracious, but best of all, he has a terrific voice.

One of America's major vocalists, Hampson has been singing everything from opera to art song for about 30 years now. Remarkably — because it is so easy to ruin a voice through improper development, excessive strain, or poor placement and support — Hampson's voice is still in excellent condition.

His voice has a distinctly American quality: clear, flexible, technically rock-solid, bel-canto-refined, but with a certain "Ah, shucks!" affability that makes imitating the quacking of a duck (as he did in an encore) seem not out of place.

On Friday, Hampson presented an eclectic array including German art songs, Russian and Italian opera arias, and art settings of English folk songs. The printed program, however, provided texts for only some of the English songs, expecting perhaps a quadrilingual audience.

Not surprisingly, the audience responded warmly to the most well-known work, a Verdi aria from "Macbeth," and to the songs in English, Copland's "Old American Songs." The audience might have been equally enthusiastic about the aria from Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" and Mahler's "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (Songs of a Wayfarer), if only they had been able to read the texts and translations.

Both the Verdi and Tchaikovsky arias were very good, and the Copland set was the most fun, but the concert's highlight was surely the Mahler.

An intimate work of delicate beauty, Mahler's four-song cycle merges voice and orchestra so completely that there are no "parts" and no "accompaniment." There is only the whole, the poetry's layers of meaning spun out through music.

Those attending might have wanted to bring along a copy of the text and its translation, so as to catch the links between songs and all those wonderful moments Mahler created: The opening disjunction between the sprightly wedding music and the jilted poet's slow echo, knowing he has lost his beloved forever; the poet's almost desperate flight into nature in the second song, which finally dissolves in despair; his anguish in the third song leading to his wish to die; his emotional slip on "Ade!" (Goodbye!); and finally, his shimmering fantasy as he escapes into death.

Hampson, who has recorded the cycle, sang with consummate skill, shading each phrase and enacting each step along the poet's journey.

It was simply outstanding.

The concert was slated to be conducted by Andreas Delfs, but shortly before it began, the Honolulu Symphony announced that Delfs had fallen ill and timpanist/conductor Stuart Chafetz would substitute.

The announcement launched ripples of whispering: It is extremely difficult to fill in for a conductor at the last moment, especially with such a varied program.

Chafetz had filled in for Delfs during the final rehearsal but did not know for certain whether he would be conducting until minutes beforehand.

It has been a long time since Chafetz last conducted in the Masterworks series, but he navigated smoothly through tricky passages and complex transitions, demonstrating how he has developed as a conductor.

Chafetz did not have the leisure to polish all those details conductors work out in advance — nuances in tempo and phrasing, pacing the waves of crescendos, choosing the hierarchy of lines — and the impact of a last-minute substitution was audible both in the orchestra and between orchestra and Hampson.

That said, however, Chafetz conducted admirably. He literally danced through Tchaikovsky's "Polonaise" and delivered an enjoyable reading of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in B Minor.

By the second half of the concert, the audience's excitement was palpable, and the concert ended with encores, multiple standing ovations and multiple bows punctuated by cheers, whistles, and choruses of "Hana hou!"