..this is not a recital restricted to one vocal hue. Each song is looked at and receives relevant response from both singer and pianist. ….he (Mark Stone) introduces so much by way of nuance and colour to make this a very interesting and fulfilling programme, one which is well recorded.

Stone has made an estimable career as a lyric baritone at Opera North and English National Opera, but he is less familiar as a recitalist. His light, airy baritone is well suited to the more easy-going English love songs, but takes on a nasal, pinched quality when a sense of drama is required, as in Frank Bridge’s galloping Love went a-riding. This attractive miscellaneous programme might have made a stronger impression if the order of songs were not so haphazard: Vaughan Williams (Silent Noon and Love bade me welcome) segues uncomfortably into Dowland’s Awake, sweet love, and Purcell, Handel and Haydn are interspersed pell-mell between Quilter and Ireland, Butterworth and Warlock, Finzu and Britten. Stone’s theme and sequence are too loose to be compelling and his diction, mostly clear, rarely achieves the eloquence of a born song interpreter.