There's a high standard of singing throughout and… Geraldine McGreevy offers delicacy, shape and direction, combined with an intelligent variety of tone, and Christopher Maltman's more forthright approach gives impetus to 'Le voyageur' and 'Prison'. Though her tone is a touch mature, Jennifer Smith is able to draw on the warm colours of her voice for the late cycle Le jardin clos (1914), a sombre, understated piece that emphasises the oblique, unpredictable harmony of the composer's final period.

Volume 2 of Hyperion's superb Fauré song series takes its theme from Clair de lune and an idealised landscape peopled with dreaming birds and sobbing fountains. It follows the composer from youth to old age, from the young charmer to the mature master to the inscrutable sage, imaginatively side-stepping all possible monotony.
Fauré's dream world is a mirror of an occasionally innocent nature that received too many cruel knocks, reflected in music of light and darkness, courage and despair. All the singers involved in this ideally presented and recorded offering perform with a special ardour and commitment; Graham Johnson is, as always, a matchless partner and commentator.