Crouch End Festival Chorus, The London Mozart Players, Kitty Whately, Robert Murray, Ashley Riches

Hear Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, his finest choral work, and also one of his most evocative and popular, as it’s sung by Crouch End Festival Chorus.

The Dream of Gerontius, based on a poem by Cardinal Newman, is Elgar’s most famous and loved choral work. It was immediately hailed as a success by audience and critics after its premiere in Birmingham in 1900, helping to elevate Elgar to the forefront of European composers and despite a performance that did not do it justice.

The first part deals with the death of Gerontius and the discharging of his Soul by the Priest to the next life; Part 2 tells of the Soul’s progression from Limbo through to his meeting with God, guided by an Angel. At the end of the manuscript score, Elgar wrote a quotation from John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies: ‘This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.’

Crouch End Festival Chorus is joined in this performance by a stellar group of soloists – Kitty Whately, Robert Murray and Ashley Riches – and the acclaimed London Mozart Players, conducted by David Temple.