The concert opens with PDQ’s exuberant anthem Long Live the King, S1789, in praise of the effect a guillotine can have on a monarch’s health. His Four Next-to-Last Songs follow, which do for the German language what the late Miles Kington did for French in his series of Franglais books. Schubert’s songs, we know, are frequently concerned with loss (loss of love, hope, life, etc), a whole genre which Schickele identifies as Loss Lieders. Hopefully the Wigmore Hall will soon schedule PDQ’s Der Cowboykönig and Gretchen am Spincycle – and indeed the substantial four-movement String Quartet in F major known as “The Moose”. Why? See Beethoven Quartet Op 135: Muss es sein? (“Is it a moose?”). Es muss sein! (“Yes, it’s a moose”). Like all the best musical jokes, the Quartet is expertly scored and played, the composer and string-players timing the gags and frequent quotes to perfection. It’s a laugh-aloud classic of its kind.

In truth, this is the high-point of the concert. The remaining items are mainly by Schickele himself – rounds (there’s a wonderfully silly one about “Le dindon de d’Indy”), song parodies and, lastly, five famous Shakespearean speeches set to various styles of American popular music (boogie-woogie, country & western and the like). There is the occasional frustration of a burst of audience laughter resulting from a sight gag, just as there are listening to recordings of the Hoffnung concerts of which this album is a direct and glorious descendant.