(Leader, Paul Beard )
BBC Chorus
(Chorus Master, Leslie Woodgate )
Conductor, Sir Adrian Boult
Orator, Valentine Dyall
Extracts from ' The Iliad,' a Chinese poem by Li-Tai-Po. Walt Whitman's ' Drum-Taps,' and poems by Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols form the texts of this symphony inspired by the 1914-18 war and dedicated to the memory of the composer's brother.
The work of one who had himself been wounded on the Somme, it is a vivid resurrection of the universal emotions aroused by war which have persisted since the days of antiquity