Pianist Roger Vignoles, whose 60th birthday is next month, will be honoured in many concerts this summer. But of the various celebrations, Vignoles will surely especially remember the recital series at the Hay festival, where the birdsong filters through into performances, as though adding to the birthday tributes.

In two of those recitals, soprano Sophie Daneman and baritone Mark Stone gave programmes of American and English songs, whose composers were conscious of treading a path as different as possible from the chansons and lieder of the European tradition. Daneman, in particular, was adept at creating an intimacy of atmosphere, which allowed Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs to resonate subtly. The 10 songs derive from the marginalia of Irish medieval manuscripts and, in their mix of piety and mischievous impiety, Daneman unerringly found the humanity.

It was in the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland that her dramatic bent found its clearest expression. With well-focused sound and precisely placed high notes, Daneman brought an elegant sweep to Copland's lines. With Vignoles' vividly descriptive mood-painting, the words had a touching immediacy.

Mark Stone's recital of songs by Quilter, Butterworth and Finzi was marked by his clarity of articulation and strong instinct for characterisation. His ability to colour the sound may as yet be limited, but the poignancy of Butterworth's settings of AE Housman, as in The Lads in Their Hundreds, came through. The moments when he could unleash the full operatic power of his voice were the most impressive and, in Finzi's cycle Earth and Air and Rain, setting 10 poems by Hardy, the matching of that force with the elemental quality that Vignoles brought to the piano writing was striking. Aptly, in the last song, Proud Songsters, the birds' roundelay was still to be heard.

· Roger Vignoles performs with Ailish Tynan at St Mary's, Hay-on-Wye, tomorrow. Box office: 0870 990 1299.