Elgar / Connolly / Skelton / Soar / Bbc Sym - Dream of Gerontius & Sea Pictures - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

• Excerpted from a Q&A with the late Colin Davis...Q Sir Colin, Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius is very popular in the UK but heard less often inGermany. Why do you think that is?A That is hard to explain. As a young man, Elgar was quite famous in Germany. The work was performedin Dusseldorf.• Richard Strauss attended, and acknowledged the work's significance.• Perhaps Gerontius is less well known because the text appears to have come straight from the Vatican.• This work also addresses the issue of dying. If you think what it must be like on your deathbed, you startto dream - that is Gerontius' dream.

Formed in 1893 by Sir Dan Godfrey, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (it should be noted that the orchestra was eventually based in Poole, but maintained the original name for tradition's sake) became a world-class and world-traveled orchestra, performing in New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Vienna (to name but a few). In addition to it's well-stamped passport, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra had the rare pleasure of working with such names as Elgar, Holst, and Stravinsky. The orchestra did spin off a smaller group, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, in 1968, but that group folded in 1999. Signed to a long-term deal with the Naxos tag, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has released more than 300 CDs, and has been nominated for a handful of Grammy Awards. For the 2008-2009 season, the conductor's baton was passed from Marin Alsop to Ukrainian Kirill Karabits.

After having recorded Elgar's the Dream of Gerontius ('Recording of the Month' in BBC Music), Sir Andrew Davis turns to two of the composer's most popular early choral works Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf and the Banner of Saint George. The recording, made soon after a successful performance, features the same 'excellent Bergen Philharmonic' and 'outstanding' vocal forces The 'imposing' baritone Alan Opie, the 'high, incisive tenor' Barry Banks, singing 'fearlessly in some quite challenging passages', and the American soprano Emily Birsan, who sang 'with radiant delicacy' (The Daily Telegraph). These two works shaped Elgar's later reputation as a leading orchestrator and most popular British composer of his time.