GEORGE DYSON (1883-1964): The Canterbury Pilgrims for Soprano, Tenor, Baritone, Chorus and Orchestra, Overture At the Tabard Inn, In Honour of the City for Chorus and Orchestra.

Description: This 91-minute cantata from 1930 sets Chaucer in an exuberant, tuneful if rather Victorian fashion. As the Gramophone reviewer put it in July of 1997: "If the idiom is undemanding, with occasional echoes of Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony and with passages that remind me of Rachmaninov's The Bells, the cantata sustains its length well." The 12-minute overture was written later (1943) and is based on themes from the cantata while In Honour is a 15-minute piece from 1928, Dyson's first choral-orchestral work, which sets the same middle English text (but Dyson used a modern English version) which Walton used nine years later to celebrate the coronation of George V, In Honour of the City of London. 2 CDs.  Texts included. Yvonne Kenny (soprano), Robert Tear (tenor), Stephen Roberts (baritone), London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra; Richard Hickox.