Peter Pears (tenor) with various performersDecca 478 2345 (6 CDs) ****

English tenor Peter Pears (1910-86) was a lifelong companion to Benjamin Britten and also the composer’s muse. Britten’s music dominates Decca’s centenary tribute to the singer, whose distinctive, light tenor was one of the most unmistakable voices of the 20th century. The set features song cycles, two of the canticles, the first (1944) recording of the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, excerpts from the operas and folksong arrangements. Pears was a performer of high musical intelligence, and his singing held to a manner of intimacy as if it were a second skin, so that his mannerisms, including a not always stable-sounding vibrato, are inescapable (Dudley Moore left a devastating parody,

Little Miss Muffet

). Pears was much more than a one-composer performer, and there are remarkable performances here of Dowland, Schütz, Schubert, Bridge, Warlock, Tippett and others to prove it. See url.ie/4w4k