EMR CD004 | DETAILS
  EMR CD004
   
  Gustav Holst: THE COMING OF CHRIST etc.
  Hilary Davan Wetton (cond.) | Robert Hardy (reciter)
City of London Choir | The Holst Orchestra
The Chamber Choir of St Paul’s Girls’ School
   
  Released 12 November 2011 | EAN 5 060263 500032
‘The Coming of Christ’, by Gustav Holst, was commissioned in 1927 by the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, George Bell, as a setting of a text by John Masefield, words and music together forming a Mystery Play reminiscent of mediaeval religious dramas. Although the work received its première the following year to critical acclaim, it was thereafter abandoned – until its resurrection at The English Music Festival in 2010; and it is here presented in recorded form for the first time.
TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
TWO PSALMS, H117 (1912)		    
1. Psalm 86  
2. Psalm 148  
     
NUNC DIMITTIS, H127 (1915)    
3. Nunc Dimittis  
       
I LOVE MY LOVE, H136 (1916)    
4. I love my Love  
       
THE COMING OF CHRIST, H170 (1927) (World Première recording)    
5. ‘I bring the power of God...’  
6. First Song of the Host of Heaven  
7. ‘O all you host of heaven...’    
8. Song of the Four Angels  
9. ‘I strengthen you...’    
10. Second Song of the Host of Heaven  
11. First Song of the Kings  
12. ‘I am King Baltasar the Fierce...’  
13. Second Song of the Kings  
14. ‘Draw here to a side...’  
15. The Antiphonal  
16. ‘Hail, little captain...’  
17. The Song of the Coming of Christ  
REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD