This recital, An Evening Hymn, takes its title from Purcell’s setting of serenly beautiful lines to a ground bass that could go on for ever. Not so the choirboy’s voice, which broke just five weeks after the recording was made. Among philosophical intimations of mortality, the good old English maxim arises – ‘Well, he had a good innings’. He did indeed. Oliver Lepage-Dean sang as a treble at St John’s for six years and was Head Chorister for two. We are not told his age, but a little tentative arithmetic comes up with 14, which these days (another time-honoured piece of English wisdom) ‘is not bad going’.

His voice is well recorded: firm and even, true in pitch, pure in quality. In two items he sings, as soloist, with the choir: Stanford’s G major Magnificat (the treble’s violin concerto) and Mendelssohn’s Geistliches Lied (consolation-prize for not having Hear my prayer). In both, the solo voice blends admirably while fully justifying its pre-eminence. There are also songs with piano, including the Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, the boy actor whose years ‘numbered scarce thirteen When Fates turned cruel’, touchingly sung by the lad from whom they took only his voice – which they may, after all, in time replace with another, just as good.