All is not totally lost.

The player WILL read a SINGLE file on a disk, provided that it is the only file on the disk, and there has never been more than one file on that disk.

This does tend to indicate to me that the problem is head alignment which gets progressively worse across the disk - is that likely?

If so, is there anyone who could undertake re-alignment?

We have spent the whole weekend copying tracks (one at a time!) to a hard drive, and then onto CD, so Mrs Pavane has been able to fulfil her engagements.