AN almost guilty pleasure comes with morning concerts, if only because they are virtually non-existent outside festivals. Ryedale Festival boasts a dozen this year.

Saturday’s brought together two well-established younger singers in soprano Sophie Bevan and tenor Allan Clayton, partnered by pianist Christopher Glynn, the festival’s artistic director.

No songwriter worth their onions has ignored the Bard: many Shakespeare settings are so familiar they flow in our national bloodstream. The difficulty for singers in such a potpourri lies in being a chameleon, so as to colour new ambience on an instant. Both Bevan and Clayton proved expert in this craft.

After warming up with popular love songs, such as Morley’s It Was A Lover And His Lass and Who Is Sylvia?, they launched into less familiar territory. Bevan was exquisite with the high ending of Julius Harrison’s Philomel, and cute in Myles Foster’s Under The Greenwood Tree. She reserved her most persuasive tones for Erich Korngold’s Songs Of The Clown (Twelfth Night), quicksilver in her mood-changing, matching Glynn’s nonchalant despatch of taxing accompaniments.

Clayton was typically robust in Quilter’s Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind. But he was capable of considerable tenderness too. The start and finish of Michael Head’s How Sweet The Moonlight and the intricacies of Tippett’s Songs For Ariel showed him at his most delicate.

They finished with two charming duets, echoing the opening Morley with Quilter’s equally animated version. Glynn was a marvel of sympathetic versatility throughout this charm-filled morning.