Thomas Hampson's recital at the NCH on Tuesday was an evening for the connoisseur. The first half, settings of Schubert and Mahler, was not only a lesson in how to sing the great lieder but a deeply moving experience. The final selection, of folksongs and arrangements by Thomas Moore, Burns, Stephen Foster, Stephen White and Copland, was a recreation of the style of singing favoured in the drawing-rooms of the late 19th century and still very popular - the most fervid applause of the evening was received by Stephen Foster's Ah! May the Red Rose Live Always.

Between the lieder and the folksongs was a selection of settings of Whitman, by Ned Rorem, Naginski, Burleigh, Hindemith and Bernstein, and the singer adapted his style to suit the expansive cynicism of the poet.

The best part of the evening was its beginning. The six settings of Heine that come from Schubert's Schwanenge sang are the outcry of a tortured soul but are also intensely private; Hampson has the voice and the physical presence to project these private feelings of anguish in a concert hall without any loss of integrity and without falling short of the dignity of art. He was partnered by Wolfram Rieger, who captured to the full the eerie sea-sounds of Am Meer and the heart-stopping silences of Der Doppelganger.

Hampson chose to emphasise the drawing-room elements rather than the folk elements of Moore, Burns, etc; he took liberties that would have spoilt the lieder but the connoisseur could appreciate the stylish way in which text and melody were made subservient to vocal display. It was an astonishing contrast to Schubert's songs, and to Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, in which the composer's barely-contained hysteria was shaped into a scena of operatic power.

Of the Whitman settings, it was curious to note that the composer who was most careful to preserve the poet's rhythms was the German, Hindemith. His Sing on There in the Swamp was also the most musically rewarding, though Bernstein's To What You Said was a most unusual piece, being in effect a fantasia on one note. Hampson's second encore, The Minstrel Boy, was as enthusiastically received as the Stephen Foster, though it was not sung with quite as much care. It would certainly have pleased the connoisseur.