First, let’s have a little pedantry, though the point to be insisted upon is, I would have thought, important enough. This is not ‘Evensong and Vespers’. Those are services; this is only music. Moreover, Evensong at King’s (I’ve never been to Vespers there) does not begin with the psalm: what is given here omits a distinctive part of the service, the Antiphon or Introit, which opens it, and the Versicles and Responses, which follow, with more to come after the Nunc dimittis. Still less is it ‘Evensong and Vespers’ when there is no priest or congregation.

And then (it might be asked) just what are the cameras doing? They show us the chapel, to be sure, and we watch as the light changes from sunshine to dusk. But most of the time they drift about in aimless fashion, alighting, randomly for the most part, on the faces of choristers. There are indeed some fascinating faces among them, faces that might come from a portrait gallery of Tudor times to the present day. But that is surely not the point. And if not, then what exactly is the point?

Back to the music. The gem is Cavalli’s Salve regina, a marvellously expressive piece, rich in harmonic and declamatory invention and rarely heard in Anglican churches. The more familiar fare, from Bairstow and Dyson, is welcome, too. The choir, as ever, is meticulous and almost uncannily assured (the eyes flicker from copy to conductor giving the impression that they could manage quite well without both). Choral scholars, like policemen, seem to get younger by the year, and in this recital I found the inner voices (alto and tenor) excessively pallid. But the music, like the place, is part of the testament of beauty, and a DVD which brings these to the home performs a service even if it does not film one.