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Kevin Maynor has a magnificent bass voice, and Eric Olsen accompanies in the good humoured, patient way that all accompanists have to have if they are to survive with their sanity and self-respect intact. However the fact is that this is an awful CD. The programme consists of twenty-one – twenty-one! – slow, mostly hymn-like numbers, sung in a uniformly straight-laced, insensitive way, with about as much flexibility of phrasing as an iron girder. The patriotic songs near the start are bad enough, but when Mr.Maynor moves into the lighter repertoire, we really are in trouble. Try as his accompanist may, the singer seems to have just one tempo, one style, one tone of voice for everything. The intimacy of Weill’s September Song is blown clean out of the water, while Unforgettable suggests that the lover in question is employing a sort of foghorn diplomacy to woo his girl. The Lord’s Prayer, with its sturdy melody and powerful climax was the only track I came close to enjoying – but then again, it is the last one on the disc…..

Gwyn Parry-Jones

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