Prom 59 – Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius

Part of the BBC Proms.

Large-scale choral music is back this season, and it doesn’t get bigger or more powerful than The Dream of Gerontius. Elgar’s greatest choral work – the story of a dying man whose soul is guided by an angel towards heaven – is a powerful musical statement of faith and wonder. ‘This is the best of me,’ the composer wrote on his manuscript score, and the searing burst of realisation at Gerontius’s eventual vision of God bears that out. The conductor is Edward Gardner, a distinguished interpreter of British music.