Faure's Au cimetiere, a calm meditation upon a village funeral, seems at first sight out of place in an anthology of songs about the sea. But, like most of the pieces in this ingeniously-planned recital, it is chosen for a purpose and placed with precision. Its description of a dead man laid to rest by friendly hands amid familiar fields is intended to throw into sharp relief the third stanza's contemplation of the horror of death by drowning at sea: alone, unshrouded ''and with open, staring eyes''. Sung with beautiful gravity by Sarah Walker, that song immediately follows Thomas Allen's compellingly dramatic account of Borodin's The sea, a turbulent storm-piece which culminates in just such a disaster as was imagined in Faure's third verse and in an eerie, almost static coda to evoke the grey waste of waters that have closed over sailor and vessel. Both songs gain impact from the conjunction, and the recital is full of instances of familiar and unfamiliar pieces striking sparks from each other by imaginative arrangement.
They are grouped in six 'chapters', each with its own title ( ''The Cradle and the Grave'', ''Departures'' and so on) with Ireland's Sea Fever as epigraph and Brahms's charming barcarolle-duet Die Meere as an ideally chosen envoi; the programme planning even allows room for a jovial mid-point intermezzo, The Mermaid (to rhyme with marr-i-ed), which Roger Vignoles's arrangement equips with joyous cries of ''sploosh!'' and a whizzingly nimble accompaniment. Having heard Haydn's jolly sailor (Allen, in splendid voice throughout, adds a couple of ornaments to his vocal line), it is agreeable to notice what a close musical relative his mermaid is (she probably has tattoos and a jaunty hat); but then how blithely innocent she is, set against Borodin's sultrily alluring maritime Lorelei (and if all Borodin's songs, we add, are this good, why are they so rarely sung?). We observe Debussy fancifully likening the waves to rippling silk or to an ''English water-colour'' (and in doing so he reminds us both of La mer and of La cathedrale engloutie) but taking care not to get his feet wet; it takes Charles Ives to leap in with a splash, roaring that he will master the waters, not be their slave.
Sarah Walker's command of sustained quiet singing and her sincerity and simplicity of utterance are as well suited to Tom Bowling (a deeply touching performance) as to her meditative pieces Faure pieces (though she could here have made just a fraction more of the words), while Thomas Allen ranges from a well-nigh flawless account of Sea Fever to a splendidly urgent reading of Wolf's Seemanns Abschied: between these he brings good line and forward movement to his miniature Faure cycle, taken a touch fast, perhaps, but with a warmth of tone that is ideal for it and a lovely negotiation of the difficult lift to the second verse of ''Diane, Selene'' (L'horizon chimerique). The recording of the piano is once or twice over-resonant, but Roger Vignoles's fine and sympathetic playing is not obscured by this. A most enjoyable recital; I hope these artists are planning sequels to it.'