From the unpublished Diary of Dolly Ponsonby, Harry Plunket Greene’s sister-in-law, Hubert Parry’s elder daughter: 8^th September 1892.

All went to hear "Job". Harry Greene was in a state of frightful nervousness. He got white & trembled violently before he sang. "Job" simply splendid. It is simply perfect I think, & everyone seemed to think so. Dear Harry sang so gloriously, and made ... me weep.

Harry Plunket Greene is on the left in picture 2, showing his continuing commitment to the Festival in 1910.

Those tours were memorable not only for their music, but also for the dead set made by these two great musicians (Plunket Greene managing with equal tact and humour his more temperamental colleague) against the old Bohemian window-dressing, against any form of what might now be called Sangerism. They agreed at the outset never to repeat themselves in their London programmes, and Greene held to this compact until he had sung over 500 songs in public.

Borwick remained for many years his constant collaborator. The performances of these two artists of Schumann’s "Dicterliebe" cycle and the songs of Schubert and Brahms attained a level which can rarely have been surpassed. ...

In later years, Greene continued his recitals with Mr Samuel Liddle as his pianist, and introduced to his audience the songs of Parry and Stanford, who wrote many songs especially for Greene, as well as numerous other composers of the next generation. He sang the bass parts in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius at the first performance in Birmingham in 1900. He was, in fact, associated with the most important vocal music of his time, and much of it he even inspired by his own artistry. Stanford’s and Newbolt’s "Songs of the Sea" (Leeds Festival 1904) and the later "Songs of the Fleet" might never have been written and certainly never would have reached their Empire-wide public without him.

The younger generation of concert-goers might hear only a pale reflection of what his artistry had once been. But though the voice shook and the intonation was not always true, Greene’s singing of "Der Doppelgänger" of Stanford’s "Loughareema", or even such a slight song as "The poor old horse" made such an unforgettable impression upon the hearer. He got to the heart of every song he sang by careful study and brought out all its beauty and all its meaning in his performance.