Whatever economic dark night the classical music industry is currently going through, one result has been an absolutely superb crop of early music records. England has particularly distinguished itself, but here is a set of an English language masterpiece from Berlin that stands comparison with the best. The version of Handel's great Jephtha that I have lived with for many years is by Marriner and the Academy of St Martin's. I'm not seeing it in the current catalogues, but what I have observed is two other versions receiving highly favourable notices. Anyone with world enough and time may want to obtain or at least hear these. For now I only wish to signal that there is another serious contender in the lists.

The recorded sound on this set is one I'm particularly comfortable with. That may be both a good and a not-so-good thing in one sense. The biblical story of Jephtha (Judges XI) is not a comfortable one in the least, and I have not so far got from this account quite the acute sense of mounting tension, panic and despair that Marriner conveys. In the scripture Jephtha attempts to make a deal of the most appalling insolence and presumptiousness with the frightful Jehovah of the old testament. Handel's librettist, the Rev Morell, perhaps nervous at even handling this incident, tries in various ways to make placatory gestures towards the Almighty, but I remain convinced that Handel, who knew his scripture, basically kept the biblical version in mind. Faust himself hardly made a more dreadful bargain, but the story also recalls the sacrifice of Iphigenia before the attack on Troy. Morell, a Greek scholar himself, names Jephtha's daughter Iphis, and I suppose he had some right to play his own variation on the name as the most famous version of that story, in book I of Lucretius, substitutes Iphigenia's sister Iphianassa for no reason that I ever knew considering both names fit the metre.

It is a kind of biblical story that Handel was uniquely suited to. Jephtha is his last oratorio and he was struggling with advancing blindness during its composition. Music-lovers familiar with Messiah but not with Handel's other oratorios would be mistaken in my view to think that a certain unevenness in Messiah, the result of tearing haste, is characteristic. Jephtha, like Samson or Theodora, is thoroughly consistent in quality and workmanship. It contains some famous high spots around the mark of the end of act II and the start of act III. Jephtha's accompagnato 'Deeper and deeper still' and the following chorus 'How dark o Lord' are well known or at least get a lot of conventional mention, as does the celestial aria 'Waft her angels', very likely because the more traditional commentators did not know the other numbers and indeed possibly not even these. The story develops powerfully, and Morell deserves some of the credit for that. He dilutes the crassness and hubris of Jephtha's behaviour, but Handel takes advantage of this to give light and shade to the action while focussing strongly on the horrific and terrifying mess that Jephtha has got himself into. It did not do to send London audiences home gloomy. Handel had probably fallen into that trap with his previous oratorio, his beloved Theodora, a gripping and convoluted tale of a priggish stand on principle, brutal retaliation, desperate and ingenious attempts to retrieve the situation, the worst possible outcome and a prevalent sense of futility. Theodora had been a box-office disaster, Morell had been the librettist of that too, and he provided a thoroughly 18th-century happy ending for Jephtha, involving not death but a commuted sentence of virginity for Iphis. At this stage my sense of dramatic action switches off, as I believe Handel's did. It is all very successfully done in my opinion, but a stylised epilogue rather than a real part of the action. Indeed it comes as something of a relief. The action proper has real development and concentration and the earlier numbers are a jewel-box. I believe that Handel has also given some measure of immortality to one Habermann by filching material from his contemporary masses for the choruses, providing the catalyst for that unique choral writing, unequalled in the entire history of the art.

With today's early music groups one becomes repetitious in saying that they perform more or less faultlessly. I don't know the nationality of the members of the chorus, but their English elocution is magnificent, and while it was fairly obvious that the Storge is not English I reflected that her pronunciation was a great deal better than the composer's from all accounts. The liner-note tells us nothing at all about the performers, and even in the era of search-engines I find that a little bit of a hardship. The booklet is in English only, so I'm all right, but what is quite startlingly good is the essay by Donald Teeters, a model of intelligence, independent thought and good sense.

Clive James should be 65 by now, if the arithmetic of the years works in the same way for him as for me. This volume of his memoirs, the second, was issued in 1985, but presumably it calls on diaries kept in his 20's, the period the book covers, so one can't really gauge how it reflects his maturation.

His greatest strength and his main weakness are one and the same thing. He produces some brilliant one-liners, but so many of them, and so similar in style, that they become just a little wearisome over the length of even a shortish book. I became familiar with him first as the BBC film pundit and then as the television critic of The Observer on Sundays. Within the scale of a half-hour programme or a Sunday review he was absolutely unsurpassable for wit and originality. He did various other tv programmes over the years, and I remember in particular a series on a tour he had made in eastern Europe, at the time still the Evil Empire of fond memory. There was a clip of a rock band consisting of various balding 40ish gents in dull suits, on which James commented in his flat Australian accent 'They don't just look like secret policemen, they sing like secret policemen'. Does that have you rolling in the aisles? It did me. It still does, and this book rarely goes two pages in succession without something of the kind. As a writer of English he is a consummate workman on his own terms. The tone is studiously light and informal, but the expression is never careless or cheap. Indeed his other fault as a stylist is a kind of demotic pretentiousness. The relaxed and plain-Joe paragraphs are liberally larded with obscure literary and cultural allusions, and it would serve him right if some readers find this patronising. What do you make of a chapter-heading 'Solvitur acris James', for instance? I happen to recognise the reference to the ode of Horace starting 'Solvitur acris hiems' (Sharp winter melts) but not only will it totally escape many, perhaps most, it doesn't have all that much point anyway in its context.

The period narrated is from his arrival in England in 1962 until just before he went up to Cambridge. As a document of an impoverished, chaotic, Hogarthian gin-lane existence it is simply brilliant. It would be hard to describe the feel of his account as precisely introspective - Rabelaisian might be nearer the mark. In saying that, I begin to suspect that James's manner is beginning to infect me too - the style of Rabelais is nothing like what you might expect from its English dictionary definition or the common usage of the word insofar as it has a common usage. Towards the end I thought I detected a distinctly deeper tone. I wonder what he could really do if he really tried.

Gould was not too sure about Beethoven and downright contemptuous of Mozart, but about Brahms he entertained no doubts at all. Let me say without more ado that this disc has some of the greatest Brahms-playing I ever heard or ever expect to. If one thing more than any made an impression on me, it was his handling of the central part of the G minor rhapsody. This sequence is in a uniquely Brahmsian mood and tone, like the passages marked 'tranquillo' in the middle of the finale of the second symphony and in the slow section of the tragic overture. None of these are lyrical in style and Brahms doesn't actually say 'tranquillo' here in the rhapsody, but the feel is the same. The one thing I can put my finger on explicitly is the way Gould gives the right prominence to the monotonous triplet accompaniment, but there's more to it than that, and as the scripture has it 'the hair of my flesh stood up'.

Except in the two rhapsodies, Gould uses the sustaining pedal a great deal and to great effect. The first ballade made an impact right away. It's taken at a fair tempo for 'andante', just slower than I'm used to, and very emotional and theatrical. The other three don't lend themselves to the same kind of treatment, but my impression in all four was much more 'personal' than I get from Katchen or Michelangeli. There is a fair amount of rubato, but not as much as he makes it seem, if that makes sense. In the two rhapsodies the style of playing is distinctly different from the rest - less pedal and very little latitude in the tempo. This suits the B minor very well, I found. The G minor is taken at a fairly deliberate pace, and no wonder considering the composer indicates 'non troppo allegro'. As a rule I am no stickler for the observance of repeats, but this G minor rhapsody is so marvellously done that longed to hear the first section done again, and there was nothing else for it but just to repeat the whole thing.

By the end of the first disc I was beginning to suspect that I was going to find nothing eccentric or perverse in the entire recital. I needn't have worried. Gould becomes a little more wilful in the selection of ten intermezzi, but there was only one that I simply couldn't take. Oh the poor A major piece from op 76! What did it do to deserve this? It is one of my favourites of the lot, and it has more ways of perming 3 against 2 in the rhythm than I would otherwise have thought possible. I was a fair way into it before I could even recognise what I was listening to. Katchen always seemed to me a little unadventurous in his playing of it, but I shall go back to his account with relief not to say desperation after the mauling Gould dishes out. Elsewhere Gould's originality wins me over even when I'm used to a different approach. The B minor that stands first in op 119 is marked 'adagio', and both Katchen and even more so Serkin understand this as a really slow adagio. Gould made me think. Adagio in Brahms seems to vary in its meaning. The last section of the alto rhapsody is adagio but it must not be dragged, and one of the best performances I ever enjoyed of the slow movement of the violin concerto was by Kramer who took a very flowing tempo indeed. Again the second E major from op 116 (also adagio) is given a fanciful interpretation that absolutely delighted me, although I continue to admire the more normal manner of Kissin. The B flat minor is more low-key and and 'romantic' than in Horowitz's typically alert reading that I shall always love, but I find I can take it either way. The great A major from op118 is the last piece here, and I was gratified to hear Gould handle the middle section in much the way I try to do it myself. He makes the repeat (non-negotiable in this instance) and at the second time round he brings out the lower melody - indeed throughout the whole recital his voicing of those very Brahmsian inner parts is a consistent pleasure. In the E flat minor, surely one of the greatest things in the whole literature of the piano, his performance is quite awesome, and nothing short of this will ever satisfy me again. My own idea of the left-hand figuration in the middle section is staccato with very little pedal, which is not how Gould does it. I haven't lost my hankering for that, but until I hear it done like that by a player of less ill repute than myself I shall have to take Gould as my point of reference.

'This nut is a genius' was Szell's famous summing-up of Gould. The overwhelming impact of these two discs is of sheer raw greatness. The recorded sound is really very good, and if you can put up with the liner-note you will be able to read what it has to say not only in French and German as well as English, but also in Italian. The music has to go on to a second disc, although it means that each disc contains only just over 40 minutes' worth each. If it had been 4 minutes each of this quality I would still have wanted the set.

Hummel is the sort of composer one mainly reads about in books and articles on Mozart Beethoven or Chopin. The liner note reveals that as late as 1950 there were only two trifles by him on record at all, and I have to admit that in my own collection he has been represented until now only by the trumpet concerto, although I seem to have known him all my life through reading about Chopin Beethoven and Mozart. From as early as a single generation after he died, he started to be subjected to foolish and supercilious put-downs. The note-writer Jeremy Nicholas properly rebuts that sort of thing, and gives what seems to me a very fair and balanced appraisal of his subject. This is not music that scales the heights, but I would call it very agreeable and interesting music, and unpretentious music too, making no ascents in the balloon. It seems that even the generous-spirited Schumann predicted that one of the sonatas on this disc was going to be all of Hummel that would live into posterity, and I for one am pleased that posterity has done better than that.

Stephen Hough is a player whose work I know a little, and the style he adopts for this selection seems to me very acceptable. He uses a Steinway and not a contemporary instrument, and I have no problem with that. His dynamic range is neither restricted nor overdone, his tempi seem judicious and when real virtuosity is required in the final movement of op20 he turns it out effortlessly. His tone-quality is warm, and if I had to compare him to a major player of the previous generation it would perhaps be Kovacevich who comes to mind. This record doesn't give me quite enough material to identify a fully distinctive personal style, and the page about him in the leaflet predictably bestows on him that vague and conventional laudation that is distributed like the gentle rain from heaven upon the earth beneath and on its own would not distinguish his musical personality from a thousand others. There is little or nothing in the performances to criticise, I should say, for the general music-lover wishing to know the composer better, and a great deal to admire and learn from.

The three sonatas on this disc date from when the composer was 29 to when he was 46. Jeremy Nicholas seems to me reasonable in his general comments, but I wish he had not spoiled them with occasional sloppy thinking. Chopin's etudes, for one thing, are not written in the 24 keys. His preludes are, but I'd feel pretty sure Bach had more to do with that than Hummel. Nor do I perceive that the Alberti base was some 'mainstay of the classical sonata'. Mozart used it aplenty, but of Haydn the statement is far from true. Again, I can't see how the fact that the F# sonata has no first movement repeat makes it resemble a fantasy. Does Mr Nicholas find that Beethoven's Appassionata resembles a fantasy for this reason? And again, the sonata in D is longer here than the F# only because the repeat is observed, and the number of bars in each is completely irrelevant.

The recorded sound is good and well tailored to the touch that Hough adopts. As an introduction to a minor, neglected and interesting master I have found this disc a very welcome addition to my own collection. I shall be both saddened and surprised if many do not feel the same way.

It is a particular pleasure to see this recital reissued on cd, and I don't know how to recommend it enthusiastically enough. I want to say at the outset that I am no species of expert or specialist in Renaissance music. This is music that ought to be immediately attractive to the general music-lover, and in fact I find it easier to come to terms with than Purcell, much as I admire that master. There are 11 pieces here, and I hope that the excellent liner-note, by Hogwood himself with French and German translations, has survived the transfer to cd. Hogwood uses four instruments, all built in the 1970's to replicate the designs of Byrd's own time and three of them based on explicit models - a small organ, a set of virginals and a Flemish and an Italian harpsichord. The two organ pieces start and close the selection, the second being the last of the 42 that comprise Ladye Nevells Booke. Hogwood believes, on stylistic grounds, that this is actually the earliest composition here, much as I believe, for similar reasons, that Brahms's last published piano piece, the E flat rhapsody, is an early work.

I own a small collection of English music of this period, mainly by Gibbons but also including a disc of works by the almost unknown Scot William Kinloch performed by Dr John Kitchen. It is all superb stuff, the performers are without exception experts, and probably Byrd is, as Hogwood says, the best of them all. Ladye Nevells Booke also has the advantage of an outstandingly authentic and reliable score, and we are probably hearing the pieces performed as they would have been in the composer's time without having to clear our heads of modern traditions in the playing that come between us and what the composer intended. The works are not miniatures - they are as long as typical movements in the Beethoven sonatas, the longest being the battle piece, of which genre there is another example on the Kinloch disc. I am no scholar in the highly complex issue of tuning (or 'temperament'), and I only wish to say on that score that the tuning here is basically of the 'meantone' type or types, based on accuracy at intervals of the major third. Music-lovers with an interest in the technicalities of the matter may find helpful, as I have done, an erudite but not over-lengthy article on the matter in The Oxford Companion to Music.

It is presumably not necessary to introduce Hogwood, nor surprising in the least that the performances are exemplary from him, and the recording is unexceptionable. My solitary disappointment is that the words of The Carman's Whistle, which are apparently not of a family character, are not provided (unless of course the previous owner of my second-hand set has retained them). My interest in the matter has been heightened on observing that even this basic reference to them has been excluded from the chaste translations into French and German.

There is no Amadeus Quartet any more, so this reissue is welcome for that reason alone. At the outset I ought to say that they omit the first movement repeats in all four works. This is a matter of indifference to me, but some may wish to read no further.

Apart from the historical significance of this set, I needed a cd successor to my revered Allegri LP of the opus 51 quartets, and the Allegri version does not seem to be currently available. I would have been surprised if there had been a clear-cut issue of merit between two such eminent ensembles, and as I expected the merits are finely balanced. The Amadeus seem to me to have the edge in the C minor, the Allegri remain more to my liking in the A minor. Where the Amadeus score in the C minor is mainly in the extraordinary third movement. With the exposition repeat omitted in the first movement, this is actually the longest movement of the four. It is a particularly difficult movement to bring off sucessfully. The two simultaneous melodies at the outset are the biggest test. For me they should be almost equally prominent, with a very slight bias in favour of the upper theme. The tempo is hard to judge too, and the slower Amadeus speed gets it right for me. I also need to hear a twanging quality to the tone of the accompaniment in the trio section, much as the Amadeus do it, and they round the movement off with cleaner ensemble on the final pizzicato chord. There is less to choose in the other movements, but again I got more emotional kick out of the Amadeus in the celestial Romanze, particularly the climactic phrase of the main melody, with its clear reminiscence of the same point in the Cavatina of Beethoven's opus 130. Neither gets the last ounce of eloquence out of it - in my ideal performance it has me gripping the sides of my chair - but it has been many years since I heard it done to my complete satisfaction.

In the A minor the Amadeus could have done with taking the first and second movements, particularly the second, a little faster. The Allegri are somewhere near perfect for me in these. The 'andante moderato' needs to be taken at a fairly brisk walking pace to make the maximum effect, and incidentally to show how it inspired the middle movement of Elgar's quartet, and I hope someday to see a cd reissue of the Claremont performance of that. In the B flat quartet the Amadeus are excellent without erasing my recollections of a superlative version by the Budapest Quartet that I no longer own. There is an obvious suggestion of Haydn in the first movement that everyone seems to have noticed, and an equally obvious suggestion of Mendelssohn in the second that nobody seems to talk about, and I hear both clearly in this account. The last movement gives me a slight problem that I sometimes have with the Amadeus - the phrasing, particularly Brainin's phrasing, is a bit affected. With artists of this eminence one often has to take stylistic features not completely to one's liking as part of the whole deal. Dvorak's opus 96 is a work about which I am less than passionate. It is very well done indeed, I compared it with my other cd version by the Moyzes group, and I found little or nothing to choose.

The liner note by John Warrack exasperated me by its conventional and, I believe, wrong-headed thinking. As usual, we are told about some supposed influence of Beethoven in the first movement of the C minor. Part of Brahms's complex mental and musical makeup was a fondness for playing subtle little games with reminiscences of his predecessors, all a feature of his conscious role as the custodian of the great German musical tradition. However the influence of Beethoven generally on him was far less than that of Bach or Schubert, the influence of Beethoven on this particular movement seems to me to be precisely nil, and overall I believe that anyone who tries to listen to Brahms with ears attuned to Beethoven will never understand him at all. He was a different musical animal entirely. The re-engineered recording is very good in its way, but for me it has a slightly artificial effect. 5 stars? Just about. At this level of interpretation one can afford to be finicky, and there is going to be nothing more now from the Amadeus.

It would not do for me to claim to understand Profofiev's second symphony when the composer famously said that he didn't understand it himself. However it must be, surely, that we're talking on different planes of understanding. What I mean for my part is that Prokofiev is a composer I take to naturally and easily as I do to Stravinsky, whereas I usually have a bit of a struggle with the more eclectic and unpredictable Shostakovich. For some reason, Prokofiev's symphonies have not established themselves to anything like the extent that Shostakovich's have, and the second in particular has a reputation for being 'difficult'. It was first performed in Paris in 1925, and its first British performance was not until 40 years later. In the 1920's Parisian taste favoured Les Six (Honegger, Frank Martin etc) in what seems to me a rather superficial and ooh-la-la kind of way. When Prokofiev decided to give them something of his own on similar lines, they reacted with bafflement on being confronted with music of genuine substance, just as they had done when they misbehaved childishly at the premiere of the Rite of Spring not 15 years earlier.

These days I can't really see why anyone who can cope with the Rite of Spring, surely not much of a hurdle, should have any great difficulty with Prokofiev's second. It's noisy and vehement to be sure, but so is much of Beethoven's 7th and even the first movement of Brahms's first. One thing is for certain - you don't have to go to it, it comes to you. I personally like the way Jarvi goes about it. He doesn't pull any punches and I would not have wanted him to. It's a controlled assault on the ears and on the understanding, but it doesn't take the same kind of toll of my emotions that much of Shostakovich does, or even that much of Schubert does, or Brahms. By way of balance, the other item on the disc is the first Romeo and Juliet suite, a welcome change from the more familiar second. This is actually a later work than the symphony, but the idiom, I hardly need remind anyone, is fairly traditional, the composer showing his lovely, genuine and underivative lyric gift.

The Scottish National Orchestra, not apparently yet 'royal' in 1985, acquit themselves very well indeed. The recording is pretty good too. It takes no chances with the violent orchestration in the symphony, and if I felt a slight wish that it had now and again, I suppose that playing safe was really the wisest course. The liner note, by Noel Goodwin, is one that I would call a model of its type. It is fairly brief and addressed to the general reader not to the scholar or specialist, but it has something useful and constructive to say without being platitudinous, patronising or pretentious. I would genuinely like to plug this record if I can, as this symphony still has some kind of barrier against its general acceptance. To any hesitant music-lover I would say just this - the ballet suite is music of immediate appeal and probably not over-familiar. As for the symphony, just relax and let it hit you.

This is my own idea of how the Bruckner 7th should be done, but I ought to say at the outset that I am not a particular devotee of Bruckner. There is a kind of Wagner-meets-the-Pope feel about him, and that impression is particularly strong in the 7th. It is all very serious-minded and edifying, and I can honestly say that I enjoy Bruckner greatly by way of a change from the kinds of music I listen to more habitually. Tintner's 'take' on him is serene rather than bombastic, and that is my own personal reason for preferring this performance to more intense renderings that may appeal more to some committed Brucknerians. The essence of Bruckner, to me, is innocence and not Angst.

Tintner gives us his own view of the symphony in a liner-note that I found very interesting and rather touching too. Once again the keynote is earnest innocence. I learn, for instance, regarding the first movement that '...unexpectedly a third melody, very different from either the first or the second, appears like an austere rhythmic dance. With these three building blocks the composer gives us one of the loveliest first movements in all music'. Surely this is the right mindset for interpreting this composer, I thought to myself. I listened with placid contentment throughout as we crossed the wide symphonic meadows of the three main movements, and I put aside impious recollections of the gods entering Valhalla at the conclusion of each, hard though that sequence was to dispel from my mind each time. The slow movement in particular was to my liking taken at Tintner's comparatively flowing tempo, which I hope and believe manages to qualify as the composer's 'sehr langsam'.

The liner note is absolutely excellent, with short sections in English, German and French on the composer, the composition itself, the orchestra and the conductor. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to expect this on a budget label. In the course of his remarks on the symphony, Tintner naturally goes into the question of authenticity in the score, arguing in support of his adoption of the version by Robert Haas.

The recorded sound is admirable, and it is an especial personal pleasure to me to hear how the orchestra from which I first heard the classical repertory has developed to the standard it has. In my early days Karl Rankl probably tried to do too much, but he left a fine legacy to Sir Alec Gibson who basically completed the work. They are not quite the LSO or the Chicago Symphony or what I am learning to call the Berliner Philharmoniker just yet, but it may be that they will yet get there. On purely musical grounds, given my attitude to Bruckner, this might well be my first choice among versions of the 7th. At this price there are no two ways about it.

The Liszt concerto here is the first and not the second, for the benefit of anyone else who is trying to obtain this disc in the hope of finding the latter. I'm not now aware of any recording by Michelangeli of the second concerto. So far as I can tell, this performance of the first is the one that helped him win the Geneva competition at age 19 and elicited the exclamation from Cortot 'A new Liszt is born'.

The Liszt performance is from 1939, and is perhaps slightly better recorded than the Schumann and Grieg, both dating from 1942. I own later performances of all three works by him. The later Liszt account, from his infamous Japanese tour, is preferable to this by virtue of recorded quality, the later Grieg and Schumann seem to me better as performances also. This is, I should say, strictly a record for Michelangeli-collectors. He was a notorious maverick - moody, unreliable and elusive - and his public repertory, when he deigned to put in an appearance at all, was very small. For me, the fascination in tracking his development is not just in his monumental greatness but also in his unpredictability. In some works, e.g. this Liszt concerto, he changed his interpretation very little, in others like the Schumann he changed it slightly, and in others like the Grieg he changed it spectacularly. From what I hear on this record, he seems to have been in a rather demure phase in 1942. The last movement of the Schumann is a very restrained 'allegro vivace', and the first movement is downright slow. I adore Lipatti's high-velocity readings of both movements, but they don't have to be done that way and if I had to name my outright favourite performances of both the Schumann and the Grieg I would still unhesitatingly plump for Cherkassky whose speeds in the outer movements are quite moderate. What M seems to do here in the Schumann is loiter. Apart from an astonishingly leisurely first movement, he drops down a gear at the second subject of the finale. Some retardation at this point is perfectly reasonable, and Backhaus for one carries off the trick very successfully, but there are limits surely.

In the Grieg and the Liszt it's easier to form a clear view of the performances. This Grieg is rather like a lower-voltage version of the extraordinary account that he recorded later with the New Philharmonia under Fruehbeck de Burgos. The phrasing is quite similar, in particular a gorgeous suggestion of birdsong in the slow movement that he plays up spectacularly in the later version. The tempi of the outer movements in this performance are a bit slower, but the real difference is in the 'charge'. His later version is the most vivid and electric I think I have ever heard from anyone, and I wonder whether the photograph of him dripping with perspiration on the leaflet with that BBC record was taken at the conclusion of the performance, as I suspect it probably was. In the Liszt he may have decided that he had a winning formula that he didn't want to change, and if so I would back his decision. I own other performances of it by Richter, Cziffra and Ogdon, all on top form, but Michelangeli has them licked. The recording here doesn't do justice to that amazing finger-power, and the quality on the Japanese performance is nothing outstanding either, but through owning it I'm able to appreciate what his audience in 1939 must have heard and wondered at.

The photograph in profile of the youngster is recognisable as the man we came to know, mainly on account of that great Roman nose like the prow of a ship. The playing is not altogether so recognisable because the recorded quality is not quite good enough to convey his unique tone-quality, the quality that more than anything else made M unique. I'm prepared to give the record 4 stars despite the recording, but I need to make it clear that I'm talking to M's other devotees and votaries when I do so. Not a safe recommendation to music-lovers in general, but a priceless document to some of us.

It's now half a century since this recording was made. For his time, Beecham used to be recorded well (they were probably terrified of him) and the quality here is not too bad although obviously not up to today's best. In the big opening number O Du mein Wille the chorus seem a bit 'recessed' for the full impact to be made, but I was less conscious of this as the work progressed, possibly because my ear was compensating but more, I think, from a genuinely better balance later on.

Anyway, I find no shortcomings from that point of view that would stop me describing this issue as one of the greatest records I know. Delius was the only English composer who consistently interested Sir Thomas, and I expect quite a lot of us virtually equate our ideas of the composer with his interpretations. I should not be surprised either if we thought subconsciously that Beecham played Delius for more than he really amounted to, based on the usual dreamy idyllic efforts. Speaking for myself, the Mass of Life completely changes my perspective on him. The style is perfectly recognisable as the Delius we know, e.g. in the wonderful prelude to part II (wonderfully performed as well), but in sheer stature he seems to have grown a hundredfold.

I do not see anything perverse in calling the Mass of Life a worthy and equal companion to Mahler's 8th. One normally thinks of Mahler as epic, Delius not, but, well, that's normally. The Mass of Life is very exceptional indeed. As for the performance, the soloists are excellent, the chorus are fine give or take some reservations about the balance, and to comment on Beecham's conducting of Delius, even to praise it, seems verging on impertinence. I am unencumbered with much knowledge of Nietzsche, but the selections that Delius uses are a universe away from any kind of politics or indeed any kind of philosophy. This is Nietzsche the poet, and I like poetry like this in much the way I like Blake -- it is all about mood and what we used to call 'vibes'. Any sense it may be held to make is poor, thin stuff by comparison. As always for me, music has primacy -- I do not hear it or judge it as a setting of the text, I value the text for itself and equally if not more for the music that it managed to inspire.

I know next to nothing about more recent versions, and I cannot even imagine a version that could supplant this, but the work ought to be promoted harder. We hear Mahler VIII reasonably often, and there are no conceivable reasons of political correctness to prevent the right sort of conductor bringing us face to face with what seems to me one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century music. Who, I wonder, might be willing to Rattle our cages in this regard?