LIEDER of the pack

TENORS have been the leaders of the classical male vocal pack for a long time now, grabbing all the best roles, cornering all the applause, commanding the biggest fees. Recently, though, there have been distinct signs that when it comes to the popularity stakes, baritones are striking back. Like tenors, the current crop of successful baritones come in all shapes and sizes - dark and handsome like Dmitri Hvorostovsky, actors par excellence like Sergei Leiferkus, strong but sensitive like Bryn Terfel: like tenors, too, they inspire critics and commentators to occasional high notes of hyperbole.

Thus the Wall Street Journal, no less, recently declared that the American singer Thomas Hampson "may well be on his way to becoming the world's first superbaritone". Just where you have to go to become a superbaritone nobody seems to know, but Hampson has certainly been showered with praise along the road and what with the Lotte Lehman Medal, the Maria Callas Award, several Grands Prix du Disque, a selection of "Singer of the Year", a trio of Gramophone awards and a fistful of Grammy nominations all jostling for space, the shelves of his trophy room must be fairly groaning. Does he win an award every year?

"Wouldn't that be nice," says Hampson, laughing at the notion and then remembering that well, actually, he is just about to collect another glittering prize in the shape of an artistic achievement trophy from the National Arts Club of America for his work in American song. "I think they even have `lifetime' on top of that one," he says, "which seems a bit disconcerting. News of my death having been, as they say, greatly exaggerated . .

The Hampson voice, so familiar from recordings, sounds unexpectedly deep on the phone from New York, where - though he lives in Vienna with his Austrian wife - he was singing last week at an AIDS benefit concert with the tenor Jerry Hadley. But as baritones go, Thomas Hampson is a high baritone, is he not, tossing off top notes many a tenor would envy? So was there ever a question - when he started out - of his turning tenor? "Well, any young baritone will be questioned about that, depending on the height of the voice," he says. "But people who knew what they were talking about never thought I was a tenor just because of the dark colour, and a certain timbre, in my singing.

As for that "effortless" top, he points out that it has taken a great deal or hard work on his part to keep it sounding that way. "But this whole question of tenor and baritone is fascinating, because the baritone voice was born of the tenor and not of the bass - we've kind of gotten that turned around in the last few years, we think it's all `umph' and `pumph' and bass baritones singing very high. That's actually not why the baritone voice was created by operatic composers; it was created to have a more chameleon like ability to create emotion and drama and lyricism without having to worry about the very highest of notes that a tenor would have been trained for."

Hampson is something of a chameleon himself, having recorded everything from Bach cantatas to The Merry Widow. He has also acquired quite a reputation as a Lieder singer, not only for the beauty of his phrasing but for the attention he pays to the texts of these song poems, and the amount of research he puts into the preparation and programming of his recitals. So how did he arrive at the programme of songs by Schubert, Mahler, Grieg and Barber which, partnered by the pianist Craig Rutenberg, he will give at the National Concert Hall next Tuesday evenings "It seemed obvious, for an Irish audience, to do Samuel Barber's settings of Joyce poems," he says. " I also wanted to include some examples of what people know me for - which is why the first half is romantic German Liedr ending with the Grieg, which dumps nicely into Samuel Barber's musical world."

Lieder recitals, or Liederabend as they are known to aficionados, are hard work for singers and aeeompanists, who are under a relentless, intense focus from start to finish no scenery costumes or glorious choruses to distract the eyes and ears, as there are in opera. They can also be hard work for audiences, who may be faced with a good deal of unfamiliar music - and unfamiliar poetry. Does Hampson believe the audience should do its homework, too? "I think," he says thoughtfully, "that we are coming to a time where it's becoming very obvious what choices we've made in our educational system over the last 10 to 15 years.

"I hate to say that, yes, the public should have to prepare for a Liederaberid because it should be part and parcel of what they come from, and their associations, and their relationship to poetry. I should imagine that the recital world would be an obvious interest in Dublin, for example, with the Irish interest in and tradition of poetry."

In truth, Irish concert goers are notoriously reluctant to commit themselves to Lieder recitals. Could it be the formality of the occasion which puts people off. Isn't the sight of a jacketed and tailed singer and accompanist slightly incongruous amid the rough and tumble of the late 20th century? "Well, I dunno, I don't think that someone standing in concert dress should necessarily be called formal," says Thomas Hampson. "I'd be perfectly willing to stand there in a T shirt."

But I do think the idea of coming to the intimacy of a concert setting is something different than everyday life - and just because something is different than everyday life, that doesn't mean it's more stilted or more distanced. In fact, creating an atmosphere away from the daily grunge and the daily noises that we hear and so forth something that is indeed a special time in which people can have the possibility of reflection, I think that's very intriguing and very inviting. I don't see anything negative in that at all."

Everyday life in the Hampson household when he was growing up was no more or less musical than in most American homes, he says. He was born in Elkhart, Indiana; three months later his father, a chemical nuclear engineer, moved the family to Washington State. His mother played the organ in church and he and his two older sisters all studied music as kids.

"Not much classical music - a great deal of American popular music, and church music, of course," he recalls. "Music was always around; but I was always more interested in studying law and in playing baseball and golf than I was in music. I sort of unravelled into this artistic world when I realised that what I wanted to do was read poetry and history instead of legal paragraphs!" He studied political science and public administration with a history minor - and then switched, halfway through his course, to a Catholic college where he took a Bachelor of Fine Arts in voice performance under the tutelage of Sister Marietta Coyle, a nun of Irish extraction who had studied with the famous German interpreter of Lieder, Lotte Lehman.

HAMPSON now divides his time between recitals, concert work, recording and live opera. And here are plenty of operatic roles he still hasn't tackled. Aren't there? "Oh, sure - in fact, I have three new roles this season. I'm doing my first Onegin in Russian, and I'm doing i Puritani at the Met, and then I'm doing a very obscure Schubert opera, Alphonse and Eslrella, with Harnoncourt in Vienna; so I'm always looking at new pieces. I will certainly do Trovatore somewhere down the line; I will probably sing Simon Boccanegrn; there's a big project coming together in 1999-2000 for Busoni's Faust; there's William Tell in Vienna in 98. There are always interesting roles.

"What I like to do in opera, the roles that interest me now, are those where the character really has some sort of development - there are some pieces that I find musically very fascinating, but I just cannot take the time to learn them, to put them on stage. Or even ones that I've done already I mean, I can't imagine being hired to do Marcello in La Boheme any more, I've done so many of them."

Does this mean - gulp - no more Figaros? Wasn't he hailed, at one stage, as the world's most debonair barber of quality? "Well, I had an intense four or five years of the Barber Of Seville," he says. "I had sort of ridden that horse; people were kind of tired of it. Like, the Met said, `well, why don't you come back in 98 and do a run of Barbers then?' But, no, I absolutely adore singing The Barber. I think it's a master piece. So I can't imagine that it will ever disappear from my repertoire."

Phew. So those whose most cherished operatic ambition it is to see Thomas Hampson deliver some of the fastest and most accurate - Figaro here, Figaro there patter on the planet, can sleep safe in their beds. Hampson, himself however, has no intention of resting on his laurels; and his plans for the future may well include what can only be described as a complete change of tune. "I've often thought," he says, "that it would be a great challenge for me, and very interesting, to try and do a straight play without music not because I think I'm so clever but because I have a fascination with theatre that I would like to, maybe, exhaust.

"So I think I probably will try that some time - and fall miserably on my face and crawl off into the corner." Oh, wouldn't the tenors of the world love that. But don't hold your breath, boys. A baritone on Broadway: it sounds like it might be a winner.