Singer and song are ideally matched, pianist and piano-part likewise, and the shade of Philip Heseltine, so strangely renamed, should gain contentment. He—the composer did not facilitate either the singing or the playing of his songs. For the voice (did he himself sing, I wonder) they have a way of passing awkwardly between registers, and though the high notes are not very high they tend to be uncomfortably placed. The pianist, caught for long in a pool of chromatics, suddenly finds his hands flying in both directions. Yet for the singer with the control of breath and command of voice that John Mark Ainsley so splendidly employs here, and for a pianist with Roger Vignoles's sureness of touch and insight, they must be wonderfully satisfying to perform, for there is such a love of song implicit in them and such a personal voice speaks through them.
The programme here is arranged chronologically, from 1911 to 1930. Early and Elizabethan poems are the favourite source, and then the poems of contemporaries such as Belloc, Symons and Bruce Blunt. Even the earliest of the songs, The Wind from the West, has the characteristic touch of a lyrical impulse, directly responsive to words, and a fastidious avoidance of strophic or harmonic banality. Often a private unease works within the chromaticism as in the Cradle Song (''Be still, my sweet sweeting''), yet nothing could be more wholehearted in gaiety when he is in the mood for it (viz. In an arbour green, Robin Goodfellow, Jillian of Berry). A pity room was not found for Piggesnie and I have twelve oxen—though perhaps that and Captain Stratton's Fancy are best left for baritones. Ainsley sings with fine reserves of power as well as softness; he phrases beautifully, and all the nuance that is so needful for these songs (in Sleep, for instance) is most sensitively judged. Vignoles is entirely at one with singer and composer. There are also excellent notes by Fred Tomlinson, and a strikingly fine watercolour by Peter de Wint graces the booklet.'