Boult's recordings of Edward Elgar's best known choral works also are classics, and here it is harder to have any reservations at all. The Music Makers was Boult's first recording with Janet Baker. The text is by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (whose main career was zoology). It opens "We are the music makers, / And we are the dreamers of dreams," and perhaps these words apply best to Elgar himself; the tune that runs through this work is the same as "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations, and the composer is the "theme" of those variations. Boult's recording is suffused with a dream-like euphoria, but not with a dream's vagueness. Baker is particularly moving in her solos, and the London Philharmonic Choir is strong throughout. If you like "Nimrod," then The Music Makers will give you 37 additional minutes in a similarly elegiac vein.
Elgar's friend Jaeger (Enigma 's "Nimrod") asserted that The Dream of Gerontius was not a work that could be appreciated after one hearing. Well said, but the loving dedication of Boult's recording (made in 1975, and the conductor's valedictory choral recording) has tremendously persuasive powers. There was a time when this recording competed with versions led by Malcolm Sargent and John Barbirolli; neither of those seem to be in the catalogue at the moment, and among the "old classics," only Benjamin Britten's version still is around. Boult's soloists are jewels. Gerontius is sung operatically (but with subtlety and grace) by Gedda, whose faint accent provides an unexpected touch of exoticism. Perhaps this recording's finest moment is when Gerontius's soul is granted a lightning-flash glimpse of the Almighty; "Take me away," he exclaims, "and in the lowest deep / There let me be." No one I've heard captures that moment's agony and ecstasy as well as Gedda, and certainly not with such tonal beauty. Watts is a formidable angel, but she shows great compassion. As the Priest (and later, the Angel of the Agony), Robert Lloyd's dark bass scores more points, and his two arias also are highlights of this recording. Boult conducts like a convert, inspiring the choirs and the orchestra to spiritual heights. His conducting is not the most dramatic, but it is the most alluring, "sacred" as it is.
The Dream of Gerontius is not an easy work – it's like Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, but with the scale and flavor of Parsifal – but eventually every devotee of choral music needs to come to term with it. Boult's recording is an excellent opportunity.
Raymond Tuttle (classical.net)


In The Apostles Boult�s vision of the music guides the listener on an epic journey, reaching to a magnificent apotheosis captured in richly satisfying sound by the EMI engineers. The female singers, Sheila Armstrong and Helen Watts, are at the very top of their form.
Likewise Boult gives a magnificent performance of The Kingdom, a work he always claimed to love even more than Gerontius. For sure this oratorio contains some of the noblest music Elgar ever created, for example the theme associated with the Holy Spirit. Margaret Price follows Boult�s visionary lead with some marvellous singing in the great sequence entitled The sun goeth down, which is perfectly paced and shaped. If there is a criticism it is that the role of the chorus is not always as clearly defined as it might be in the recorded perspective, but the challenge of the complex textures and shifting priorities makes this in any case a complex issue of interpretation rather than mere technicality of resources.
... Philip Ledger�s committed rendition of The Coronation Ode, the work in which Land of Hope and Glory first appeared (we should remember that the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 was purely orchestral). There is a clear danger of inflated pomposity and jingoism in this piece, but with his fresh, clear-headed approach, Ledger avoids any such charge, bringing much vitality to the rhythmic thrust of the faster music, much sensitivity to the slower moments. As in The Kingdom, the female singers are particularly fine.
Terry Barfoot (musicweb.uk.net)