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EM Records do wonderful work, and I shall be ordering this from them. Thanks for the reminder and I very much look forward to it. I have the sonatas since i was a teenager and I'm sure there is much else to enjoy.

Of course "The Traveling Companion" has been heard now too, and the CD of that will be out before too long, one hopes.

How wonderful, such a lovely work. I wish could be there, but I'm meeting a friend for dinner on the 1st in Tokyo and don't think I'd get there in time

Thank you! I'll be getting the recording certainly! Though I would probably be more interested in King Saul. I really enjoyed Job on Hyperion and listen to it frequently.

Oh wonderful! I've really enjoyed the CD of this.

It's the whole of the original score: the Sullivan Society insisted on that. The omissions are the revised versions (shorter) of some numbers: it seems that neither then nor now those revisions have been considered effective. I think the length difference is the sprightlier tempi, which are very welcome. Rather than a dirgy slow work, as it has previously seemed from extracts I have heard, it moves forward convincingly. The overture to part 2 is a wonderful moment of climax, as are all the big choruses at the end of each section. "Men and brethren" is fascinating me at the moment. Anyway, I would say that this recording is really well done and gives the work the best chance it might have to shine. This is wonderful, when the recording of the Martyr, though well-performed, suffers from a lack of chorus numbers. Hopefully a recording of that work will emerge in a few years.

I look forward to this. I enjoy some light music, though I got a bit bored with the endless John Foulds releases.

Gounod thought the Light of the World was a masterpiece, so you might enjoy it. I'm eagerly awaiting my copy. I had a sneak preview of a few passages, thanks to a kind connection in the Sullivan world, and the recording certainly does the work justice. If it isn't enjoyable in this recording I doubt it ever will be. But I'm very optimistic about it.

Sullivan in my experience is rarely maudlin or sentimental: his sense of drama and humor always keep him enjoyable. And I am really keen to hear his orchestration, which I always enjoy. Works like Ivanhoe and The Golden Legend were transformed for me when I heard them performed professionally with full orchestra.

I can't believe it's being performed in Saffron Walden! I lived there when  I was five and my parents still live nearish, but sadly I'm in Japan!

There was a broadcast of extracts, which some members may have heard. Reminded me a little of Tchaikovsky's operas, plus one prelude that sounds very like the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. I would love to hear the full opera. But I would love to hear all Stanford's operas.

Very exciting! Stanford never disappoints in my experience. But how odd that he apparently wrote three unaccompanied masses and lost them all in the space of a few years. I would imagine that these works are likely to be different versions of the same project, though I doubt anyone has any way of knowing now.

They are out now. I received my copy the other day, as one of the people running Retrospect Opera lives here in Japan. I'm still getting used to it, but it's a marvelously dramatic score, perhaps the sort of thing that Wallace intended Lurline to be originally, before he scaled it back. It's much more "real" opera than some of the other British romantic operas of the era. Beautifully performed too, so highly recommended.

So Gramophone actually claimed to have listened to both recordings and didn't know it was a different work? Someone should be barred from music criticism for life!

Wonderful! I love Caractacus. When I was a teenager the Groves recording had been deleted, and I wrote to Michael Kennedy (who must have been bemused) and he made me a tape of it, bless his heart. A great man.

Thanks for letting me know. I really enjoyed her third symphony, so will be ordering this!