Your reviewer is old enough (just!) to recall the impact the first complete recording of The Kingdom made in the 1970s. Conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on EMI, with a fine cast of soloists, including soprano Margaret Price at the height of her powers, that recording really launched the modern reappraisal of the oratorio, which many Elgarians consider superior to The Dream of Gerontius, the composer’s earlier full-length choral work.

In a personal note in the liner booklet to the new Signum Classics recording, conductor David Temple points to Elgar’s own recording of the Prelude, the only section of The Kingdom recorded by the composer, as the basis to his own approach. Temple has evidently absorbed much from that scratchy 1930s recording and finds as much of Elgar’s persuasive way with the music – ‘full of colour, energy and pathos’ – as possible; moreover, he also possesses something of a hotline to the drama embedded within the music, producing a powerful account of the score that is always forward moving, never inert. Directing his own excellent Crouch End Festival Chorus will certainly have helped, and it is evident from their singing on this album that they would go the ends of the earth for him. With a first-rate quartet of soloists, an expanded London Mozart Players and authoritative liner notes from 19th- and 20th-century British music expert Jeremy Dibble, this is a release to savour.

★★★★★