This release is of a different and more ambitious kind than other releases of the mid-2010s on the Lyrita revival label. Like the others, it is taken from BBC broadcasts, but in this case, the recording was made in a studio, not live, and the sound quality is much superior. The most unusual feature is the music by the almost-forgotten Granville Bantock, who was as responsible as anyone else for the ongoing popularity of Sibelius in Britain, and who, believe it or not, liked to dress up as the medieval Persian poet Omar ...
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This release is of a different and more ambitious kind than other releases of the mid-2010s on the Lyrita revival label. Like the others, it is taken from BBC broadcasts, but in this case, the recording was made in a studio, not live, and the sound quality is much superior. The most unusual feature is the music by the almost-forgotten Granville Bantock, who was as responsible as anyone else for the ongoing popularity of Sibelius in Britain, and who, believe it or not, liked to dress up as the medieval Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Thus this work, not an opera, but a setting of the Rubaiyat 's 101 stanzas, has a peculiar quality of personal commitment that shines through its Edwardian gigantism. It's an over-the-top mish-mash, often cut when it is performed, but here presented in full. In its mostly choral writing there are echoes of Verdi, Delius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Elgar, maybe Schoenberg in some of the orchestral effects, and even Arthur Sullivan, but the overarching influence is Wagner, reimagined...
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