Congratulations are due to all concerned here. That includes the compilers who drew the best out of the two LP originals and thought to bring them together. It probably embraces also the two critics, Trevor Harvey and John Warrack, who in these columns discerningly reviewed them. Nanie (it is interesting to note) was little known at the time, so that TH added, rather plaintively: “I cannot think why choral societies, especially the smaller ones, don’t take this piece up”; “tender and expressive” were his words for it. It is also interesting that neither Helen Watts’s Alto Rhapsody nor Shirley-Quirk’s Vier ernste Gesange has secured a place in that insidiously self-perpetuating hierarchy we call ‘the classic recording’. Perhaps there is something, a quality of voice or of soul, that accounts for it; yet, listening just now, I felt not the slightest urge to look beyond them, to Baker or Fassbaender, Fischer-Dieskau or Kipnis. Both are lovely performances, the fine voices managed with unostentatious technical skill, guided with sensitivity to phrase and shape, without detriment to the smooth, well-bound vocal line. Another tribute to the singers arises out of the transfers which in the orchestrally accompanied items are sufficiently ‘toppy’ to catch a slightly acid flavour in some of the instruments yet reveal no surface scratch or other impurity in Helen Watts’s tone, while Shirley-Quirk’s is beautifully even and full-bodied throughout its impressive two-octave range. One warning: no texts.'