Debussy's limitations as a songwriter, he wrote, had been hinted at by Paul Dukas: "If he sets a given text, his efforts tend less towards training his thoughts on it than, by a sort of personal paraphrase, to note the musical impressions suggested to him on reading the poem."

Gérard Souzay, recorded late in his career, was far from compelling, and Mady Mesplé, also well past her prime, could offer only "a thin, squeaky tone wholly inadequate to the task in hand."

The Dutch soprano Elly Ameling, "though not wholly idiomatic", sang "with all accustomed good manners and thoughtfulness" in the Proses lyriques and the first set of Fêtes galantes.

Ameling concluded the recording with a beautiful rendition of some delicate Mallarmé settings and Debussy's sorrowful, angry First World War Christmas carol for homeless children.

Elly Ameling was good in Debussy's juvenilia, better in the masterpieces of his maturity and touching in the "appealing innocence" that she brought to the wartime carol that he had composed not long before his death.

But even her singing could not rival the "languorous and ecstatic" Ariettes oubliées that were Frederica von Stade's brief contribution to the album, their sensuality variegated by a suitable merriment in the carousel-themed 'Chevaux de bois'.

Souzay, finally, compensated for his unhappy efforts on the album's first disc by providing some of the choicest items on its third: his Villon group and his Promenoir des deux amants displayed "a style probably unmatched by any other interpreter".