It's well known that Elgar contemplated an oratorio trilogy based on the Gerontius story, and as Anthony Payne asserts in his scholarly introduction to this latest reconstruction, "The conception was virtually complete in Elgar's thoughts at the time of his death, and the only elements missing were the music and the text, the restoration of which is a simple matter once one apprehends the composer's intentions." The first suggestion that a reconstruction might be possible occurred to Payne while filling in the gaps in Elgar's projected Third Symphony. The composer's posthumous thoughts, or what remains of them, are housed in the British Museum where they were catalogued with, according to Payne, a "shocking disregard" for their logical order and sequence. As work progressed on the Third Symphony, Payne stumbled across Elgar's initial idea for the oratorio and was able to trace the conception as it developed in his mind from initial inception around 1915, virtually until his final illness.

What we have, then, is a work in three parts, the special genius of which (again according to Payne) "resides in the composer's unique ability to write extensive tracts of music embodying the theological concept of a place out of time, between heaven and hell, where nothing at all happens as individual souls endure the time-consuming ritual of purification before being granted redemption." Gerontius' actual moment of admission to paradise is reserved for the third item in the trilogy, "The Assumption of Gerontius", at which Payne is currently hard at work. The drama of this middle panel consists entirely of the great man's soul attempting to discover just how much time it must spend before moving on to its heavenly reward, and gradually resigning itself to the reality that it will never know and must simply do nothing and wait. To suggest that such an outline presents serious musical challenges would be an understatement.

In Part One, after an intensely neutral orchestral prelude "suggestive of nothing in particular" (according to the composer's original thoughts), the Chorus of Idling Spirits welcomes the soul of Gerontius with the solemn hymn "Make thyself at home, oh happy suffering soul!" Payne is a bit evasive as to the actual source of the text, considering the fact that Cardinal Newman never got beyond the original "Dream of Gerontius", and his last thoughts (owing to a bequest of his American relatives) are now housed in the Library of Congress, to which Payne did not have access. Be that as it may, the results are entirely typical of the clergyman's special way with the English language. One particular highlight of Part One is Gerontius' bemused aria "Twixt heav'n and hell fain would I remain, not".

Part Two contains the highpoint of the work, the thrilling confrontation between the soul of Gerontius and the Angel of the Monotony (here sung with appropriate sobriety by Linda Finnie). In the ripest possible neo-Handelian style, Elgar/Payne have hit on the brilliant idea of illustrating the unending dullness of purgatory by giving the Angel a 20-minute-long da capo aria, "Be thou accustomed to inactivity, thy time is well and truly not nearly nigh". The composer's genius at word setting is enhanced by a footnote in the score (another of the original thoughts that Payne worked from) expressly forbidding the singer any embellishments on the repeat, thus giving the aria an elegantly and uneventfully symmetrical structure enhanced by the fact that its vocal range never extends beyond the interval of a minor third.

In Part Three Gerontius, nearly mad with the tedium of enduring purification, is consoled (in a mellow pastoral interlude) by the soul of his beloved gardener Maximilian, with whom he shares fond memories of horticulture in the charming duet "Thou bounteous peat and fertile loam doth maketh me ever desirous of home". The chorus admonishes them in the sternly emphatic one-part fugue "Leavest behind thy fleshy failings", and thus chastened, the soul of Gerontius realizes that it must await the will of the Lord with patience and humility. The piece ends with an uplifting duet with chorus featuring both Gerontius and the Angel of the Monotony, who assert the strict doctrinal line: "The eons pass, the ages wither, in God's own time shall thy soul drawn be thither".

It's difficult to overestimate Payne's achievement in realizing this work so idiomatically, and in particular in divining Elgar's radical intentions regarding both orchestration (the ensemble consists only of 46 violins which play in unison throughout) and especially tempo (andante moderato in 4/4 save for a single fermata on the closing middle-C). Conductor Richard Hickox and the strings of the BBC Midlands Philharmonic play with warmth and great conviction, making the work's 118 minutes sound like, well, only 118 minutes, which is no mean accomplishment. Ian Bostridge gives his all as the soul of Gerontius, running the entire expressive gamut from indifference to resignation. As the gardener Maximilian, veteran baritone John Shirley-Quirk makes a welcome if somewhat wobbly return to disc after a long absence. Chandos' sonics uphold the high standards of the house. This is in sum a triumph in the best English choral tradition, and not to be missed by either devoted Elgarians or practitioners of sensory deprivation, which is in any case much the same thing.

--David Hurwitz