This latest album in Hallé’s award winning series of recordings of works by Elgar couples his last great choral work with a fascinating collection of works which similarly remember the departed. The largely overlooked The Spirit of England is arguably Elgar’s last great choral work. Thematically linked to The Dream of Gerontius the work sets texts from WWI poets and was premiered in sections during 1916 and 1917. In tone it is close to the melancholy of the Cello Concerto and Britten referred to its music as displaying “a personal tenderness and grief” as well as “genuine splendour”. The melodrama A Voice in the Wilderness movingly depicts the contrasting moods of the desolate and subdued Western Front by night and the soaring, aspiring lines given to a war-time Belgian peasant girl.

The remaining two works on the album present works inspired by Irish literature. Grania and Diarmid was a play based on tales of Irish mythology. Elgar’s music for the play, a story of tragic entangled love, was described by playright W.B. Yeats as “wonderful in its heroic melancholy”. Bax’s rarely performed orchestral work In Memoriam is subtitled ‘An Irish Elegy’. It reflects the composer’s passionate interest in, and love for, Ireland, her literature and her tragic early twentieth century history – including the Easter Rising of April 1916 and the subsequent execution of some of its leaders which deeply shocked Bax. The resultant music contracts outbursts of anger with episodes featuring melody of profound sadness and lyricism.

Recorded in concert, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Producer Steve Portnoi: The Spirit of England and In Memoriam (6 November 2014); A Voice in the Wilderness (7 April 2016). Recorded Hallé St Peter’s, Ancoats, Manchester, Producer Andrew Keener Grania and Diarmid (30 March 2016).

Conductor
Sir Mark Elder

Soloists/Artists
Rachel Nicholls, Soprano
Joshua Ellicot, Narrator
Jennifer France, Soprano
Madeleine Shaw, Mezzo-Soprano

Chorus
Hallé Choir (Madeleine Venner, Choral Director)

Catalogue number CD HLL 7544