Richard Pennycuick:

>It's a form I find very annoying.... Anyone to defend?

Actually, yes, depending on the actor who does the speaking.  Gielgud in
the Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antarctica, for instance; though I agree that
the text of An Oxford Elegy goes on too long.  I find the spoken passage
at the end of the Egmont recording by Karajan very moving; ditto with
the Finnish speaker in Sibelius' The Wood Dove.  And Lincoln's words in
Copland's Lincoln portrait are more arresting than the music.  The three
famous children's introductions to the orchestra I prefer without narrator,
thank you very much, though I once heard a wonderful Peter and the Wolf in
Australian English with original words by John (?) Hogan.  (Never been able
to find it since.)

Jim Tobin