Oratorios are often on biblical or spiritual subjects, but Philip Sawyers’s Mayflower on the Sea of Time (2017 18) was composed to mark the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s sailing to New England, part of a wider music education scheme with local Worcestershire schools. The premiere in Worcester Cathedral was set for April 2020 but the pandemic lockdowns twice delayed it, and it was only unveiled in June this year. This recording is of that premiere.

Attractive and tonally vibrant, Mayflower on the Sea of Time divides into four parts, played continuously. The first, ‘Persecution and Journey’, sets the context for the pilgrims’ flight from an England unsympathetic to their views (it is often forgotten that the Puritan pilgrims were themselves somewhat intolerant), first to the Netherlands and then across the Atlantic, giving Sawyers the pretext for a compelling depiction of a storm at sea. The second, ‘Arrival in the New World’, details the founding of the colony and sometimes antagonistic interactions with the local Indian people (some of whom already spoke English, having crossed the Atlantic the other way previously). A brief, scherzo-like ‘Survival and Making Our Community’ then leads into the (mostly) celebratory finale, ‘Our New World’.

Philip Groom’s intelligent libretto tells its tale largely through Edward Winslow, a Worcester chorister in the early 1600s, his wife Susanna and their son Peregrine. Thomas Humphreys and the radiant April Fredrick as narrators sing these and a number of other roles, from the Captain to other colonists and the native Squanto, alongside Brittany King and Amelia Jones, and the superb English Symphony Chorus (the voice of the expedition itself). The bedrock of the whole is the excellent English Symphony Orchestra – whose future was until recently in doubt due to Arts Council cuts but has now been saved – under the indefatigable Kenneth Woods, who just seems to go from strength to strength with each recording. Nimbus’s sound is beautifully clear and resonant. Strongly recommended.