It will be hard, almost unnatural, to write this without saying ‘charming’ in every other sentence. But everything is quite simply that: there is charm in the music, the poems, the singing, the playing, even in the booklet-notes, these being written, of course, by Graham Johnson. And, one has to reflect, who but he could have compiled such a programme?

For this man a programme has long been an artform, where inventiveness is given all possible freedom within the disciplines inherent in a thematic structure. Thus the recital does not merely have L’invitation au voyage as its title but also, at suitable intervals, as its recurrent motif. Hugo’s Guitare appears twice (the second time as Comment, disaient-ils), and, as a further, unstated, theme, the inclusion of texts well known in other settings.

And how the settings make a different poem of it every time! Baudelaire’s invitation is proposed in saucy waltz-time (Cressonnois), with wistful serenity (Godard) and with lolloping nonchalance (the Hillemacher brothers – they wrote under one name) before appearing as the thing of ‘depth and seriousness’ (Johnson’s words) that we know through Duparc.

And if the disc presents a new version of several familiar texts, so it introduces (I think) a new John Mark Ainsley. His style and voice are more relaxed, his tone warmer, at times honeyed. He is sensitive and idiomatic in his way with the words but remembers always that the graceful preservation of pure singing-line is of prime importance. His use of the head-voice is…charming. As for Johnson’s playing, it brings out a distinctive life and worthiness in everything, and that says much, for many of these songs, which here are capable of giving pleasure to the most discriminating ears, would (one suspects) sound commonplace enough in other hands.