The mean old saying that ‘those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach’ would have withered in the presence of Stanford; and no doubt one of the reasons why he was such a great teacher is that he could and did, and so set an example. His C major services (Morning, Evening and Communion, all included in this programme) are so eminently the works of a master who knows how to get from here to there in one move, to keep always something in reserve for later use but never to write without a good clear melodic idea in the first place. Everything in this programme has freshness and well-founded assurance. It is music with clarity of purpose: it knows where it is going and doesn’t put a foot wrong.

St John’s Chapel is a good place for it. Unlike King’s up the road, there is no enveloping echo to dull the edge of definition. Yet it has space enough for the voices to expand and an extremely fine organ to accompany them. Under Christopher Robinson, director for the past eight years and now retiring, the choir has enjoyed a period in which the distinguishing mark has been a renewed vitality of style. It is well caught in this CD. The start of the first track, the C major Te Deum, has it straightaway – the praise carries spirit and conviction. The final track opens still more strikingly. This is For lo, I will raise up, the vision of the prophet Habakkuk evoking first ‘that bitter and hasty nation, which march through the breadth of the earth, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs’, for which Stanford, writing in 1914, set his imagination free to bestir the choir-stalls into an almost fiercely dramatic life. The St John’s choir bite into the words with relish, the acoustic and their well-judged tempo reinforcing the rhythmic energy of the passage still more than does the more sumptuous recorded sound of King’s in their comparable (and rival) Stanford CD.

In this instance it would be a pity if the existence of other admirable recordings were to discourage the interested listener. Stanford is now well represented in the catalogues – in addition to King’s single disc, Winchester Cathedral’s set of three on Hyperion, and Priory’s complete edition of the services come to mind. But in even the best-stocked collection this would prove a welcome addition, and for those who have as yet nothing of the master, it should provide a lively introduction.