Ron Davies,

Rachmaninoff Vespers - I had never heard these but in the last week I have heard two of the pieces on the radio.   Amazingly beautiful.

I agree about Concierto de Aranjuez, too. A perennial favourite of mine.

And I have a cassette of Mandolin orchestra music called Virtuoso Mandolins, which is not available on CD. Brilliant! Some Vivaldi, some Bach, and others.   I bought a cheap but excellent CD of Renaissance vocal music. That's one of my favourite CD's now, too.

Bruch's Adagio appassionata is listed as a separate track under its own heading as if it is a self contained piece. It is very self contained, in my opinion, it goes through the whole range of a totally tragic experience.

And Paul Burke, have you heard those totally dreadful renditions of folk music sung by singers with "the classical voice training that turns me off, the plum in the mouth style"? It's indescribably bad.

A couple of decades ago I looked forward to hearing a radio show of singers performing Elizabethan songs from a book I have, which was compiled by WH Auden and Noah Greenberg. Some stunningly simple melodies, but when sung with that overblown classical style it was a killer. I was so disappointed because I had never heard any of the tunes sung, only played them myself from the book and I really wanted to hear them being performed, but then afterwards I wished I hadn't.

Helen