Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST
Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter
LETTER of the MONTH
Songs to inspire
In the Archives reviews of your September issue, I came across your comments about the first recording of Vaughan Williams’s – the ‘incomplete’ version [minus the as yet undiscovered final song] – and was intrigued. Visiting Manchester around my birthday many years ago I was given two gifts: a first recording, by John Shirley-Quirk, of the complete set (on the Saga label), in mono, accompanied by Viola Tunnard; and a ticket to hear a very similar recital given by him in the Friends’ Meeting House. I had sung as a treble at school and had recently graduated to being a bass, and Shirley-Quirk’s singing so impressed me that, some 50 years later, I am still singing, in the
