Les nuits d’été has been recorded by many female singers, but by few men. This is the first by a male alto. The songs lie as well for David Daniels’s voice as they do for many artists (only ‘Absence’ has a substantial transposition, down a fourth), but this is not the problem. Dealing with the wide range of their nature and expression has always been difficult, making distribution between several singers a frequent option; though there are of course artists, most celebratedly Régine Crespin and certainly including Janet Baker and more recently Susan Graham, who have found ways of responding fully to each song. Daniels’s voice does not really encompass the different demands. If his unremitting vibrato helps him in sustaining his tone quality, it does not contribute to varying the colour, and goes against, for instance, the phrase Berlioz marks sotto voce ed estinto in ‘Absence’. Nor does it suit the blanched emotions and level lines of ‘Au cimetière’. He can also be rather too free with rhythm and attack, which, together with the vibrato, leads to both ‘Villanelle’ and Fauré’s ‘Mandoline’ forfeiting their light precision; this is much less marked in Ravel’s Mélodies populaires grecques.

The fill-ups are purely orchestral. The excerpt from Les Troyens is the Pantomime from Act 2, as the widowed Andromache passes gravely with her little son Astyanax before the awed Trojans. They do not, of course, make their choral contribution here, nor does Cassandre interject her brief comments, leaving the field to a finely played clarinet solo. There is also an eloquent performance of Fauré’s Elégie.