GREAT RECORDINGS phase 18

ELGAR
The Dream of Gerontius
The Music Makers

Sir John Barbirolli
Sir Adrian Boult

3 91978 2

Stereo
ADD

Recorded 1964 & 1966
137 minutes (2CD)

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"It very much belongs to the Angel of Dame Janet Baker and the conducting of Sir John Barbirolli here giving another example of that instinctive rapport which filled the few precious recordings they made together. Barbirolli penetrated to the core of the work's spirituality… The Angel’s Farewell is the very epitome of serene consolation."
(The Gramophone)

This 1964 recording of The Dream of Gerontius, though made over four days at Christmas in a miserable and foggy Manchester, has long been the version of choice in round-up reviews, most recently on BBC Radio 3 in Building a Library. Besides the leading Gerontius of his day, Richard Lewis, and the tremendous doubled chorus, it established Janet Baker as a peerless Angel.

This new coupling presents another classic of Dame Janet’s early recording career, as soloist in The Music Makers, which she recorded precisely two years later under Sir Adrian Boult.

Both these large-scale works now benefit from entirely new transfers and 24-but digital remastering.

In his booklet essay, ‘Barbirolli and Boult, Elgarian champions’, Lyndon Jenkins details Sir John Barbirolli’s long relationship with Gerontius and includes a number of memorable anecdotal quotes (‘You’re not bank clerks on a Sunday outing,’ ‘JB’ would tell recalcitrant choruses, ‘You’re souls sizzling in hell!’).

The note concludes by appraising The Music Makers: in such works, ‘for richness of conception, nobility of sound and clarity of outline, Boult had few rivals’.