This is a carefully planned programme of songs from the 1880s to the 1920s, some of them not well known. It begins with ‘Love’s old sweet song’ – did Sullivan have the refrain at the back of his mind when composing ‘When a merry maiden marries’ in The Gondoliers? – and ends with the bleakness of ‘Betelgeuse’. The sheer quality of the intervening songs will come as a surprise to many listeners. The second composer to be represented, Maude Valérie White (1855-1937), is particularly interesting. Her setting of Byron’s ‘So we’ll go no more a-roving’ has a vigour and passion far removed from the traditional Victorian ballad. ‘The spring has come’, to words by White herself, is a lively waltz. Perhaps Graham Johnson overstates the case in referring to the ‘marvellous melody’ of ‘The Devout Lover’ but the performance – perfectly judged rubato – is mightily persuasive.

Not everything is golden. Liza Lehmann (1862-1918) managed to spoil the magical ending of Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyám by repeating the penultimate stanza (the quatrains incorrectly laid out in the booklet, incidentally). But ‘Pa’s Bank’ is a delight, performed with the lightest of touches: Alice Coote matches the Banker’s scooping up of the gold with a scoop of her own, and the whispered bafflement of the last line is just right. Another light number to clear the palate (not ‘palette’, Mr Johnson!) is Warlock’s ‘Queen Anne (Tempo di minuetto)’. Of the serious songs, none is more moving than Gurney’s ‘Lights Out’. From start to finish, the artistry of Alice Coote and Graham Johnson is of the highest order. Richard Lawrence