SCARPIA: Style counsel: Vocal icons and pianists, including Keith Lewis and Victoria de los Angeles

IT'S NOT by chance that organists are the least noticed among performing musicians: they either show their backs to the audience or aren't seen at all. The inflated fees that singers receive may reflect the relative brevity of their careers, but could also be linked to their unique advantage in cultivating their own person as the most precious instrument of all.

But singers vary a lot: while some become veritable icons, others remain simply singers. In the latter category I should count Keith Lewis, an excellent lyric tenor with a first class reputation, who attracted rather a small audience at the Wigmore last Thursday.

His sweet but powerful voice served Schubert, Strauss and Tchaikovsky equally well and his Satie encore was really stylish. Consistently elegant and effortlessly musical, he was less engaging to watch than to listen to, because he had half an eye on his crib sheets throughout and stood stiffly, only allowing himself an inhibited gesture or two in one song.

The real problem with Keith Lewis as a recitalist is his lack of personality, which could never be said of Victoria de los Angeles. It's not hard to see why she has carried on performing longer than most singers. She was recovering from pharyngitis last Sunday, but the sheer generosity of her stage presence reassured us. Inevitably, the frog in her throat caused some anxiety in several of the more sustained songs, but then, perhaps, it also sharpened appreciation of the intense mingling of love and regret she brought to Strauss's Allerseelen and the warmth and depth of Morgen - expertly spunby her partner Geoffrey Parsons.

The clean-cut, fresh vocal quality and pure intonation that have always marked her out were still evident, but if they seemed a bit clouded on this occasion, her vivacity and gift for identification were as great as ever. They made her group of Spanish, Latin American and Portuguese songs especially enjoyable; she held us enthralled with the protracted coaxing of a Mexican lullaby.

Meanwhile, this Saturday at the Wigmore Hall, she joins the tenor Nicolai Gedda, just two years her junior, in a shared recital. Of all vocal types the tenor is perhaps the most like a forced growth, the most constrained by an image of virile youth. Yet Gedda has survived not by being stylish alone, for there was not a single cracked note in his solo recital at the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday.

It's odd that Richard Strauss, who is meant to have disliked the tenor voice, described his first great set of songs, Op 10, as 'real tenor songs', and it was a joy to hear Gedda so firm and true in Zueignung, which is more often sung by sopranos. He seemed a lot more natural in Strauss and Rachmaninov than in Schubert, for though An Sylvia was delightfully crisp and sprightly, the obvious effort involved in sustaining quieter songs like Der Jungling an der Quelle or Nacht und Traume commanded respect but hardly allowed us to relax and enjoy what we heard.

Schubert featured, for better or worse, in two piano recitals at the Wigmore. Piotr Anderszewski, the Polish pianist who attracted so much interest when he opted out of the last Leeds Competition, justified his choice of the over-played B flat Sonata on Saturday with an interpretation of remarkable depth and mellowness. He took the first movement slowly, though not as slowly as Richter and Demidenko have in the past, and he observed the repeat. In both outer movements he sometimes showed a predilection for unusual voicings, emphasising inner parts or the harmonic movement of the left hand, leaving the melody to look after itself. He seemed intent on controlling volume - far from easy in this sonorous hall - and kept the stormy passages of the finale airy and lightly pedalled. A finely sustained performance, which took the hard route to heaven.

In complete contrast, the young American, Alan Gampel, the Wigmore's pianist on Monday, played as fast and efficiently as his fingers would let him. He was ill-advised to play Schubert's first set of Impromptus, which need a performer with a great heart. Gampel was never so happy as when rattling off the considerable intricacies of Chopin's Variations on 'La ci darem', though the lyrical impulse behind them was lacking. Agosti's sensational transcription of the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky's Firebird could hardly fail to make an impression, and Gampel was everywhere on the keyboard at once, but these days dexterity alone won't guarantee a career.