Both Amarus and the Field Mass demonstrate the folly of trying to sift the essential from the dispensable in the work of a major composer: neither is without its flaws but both contain pages that no admirer of the composer in question would willingly do without; they must be essential, then. One such moment in the Martinu occurs where the text moves from an interleaving of passages from the Requiem and the Book of Psalms to a directly personal prayer for ''my distant home'', and at this point an eloquent trumpet phrase and a momentary recollection of liturgical chant vividly evoke Martinu himself, hearing in anguished exile the news (the work dates from 1939) of Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Later on, after martial fanfares, the chorus sings with simple, heartfelt intensity of ''the sweet, holy places of childhood'' and then, in a sequence that draws on two of the manners in which Martinu was strongest, the dramatic and the ceremonial, an archaic-sounding Kyrie and a solemn Agnus Dei are interrupted and at last silenced by ever more insistent rumours of war, an assault of trumpets and drums. The work ends, not with optimism or a rallying cry for resistance, but with solemn ritual antiphons between soloists and chorus and with a distant, menacing rattle of drums before a whispered Amen.
Amarus has patches of rather conventional dramatic narrative and of uncharacteristically lush scoring, but these are set alongside vocal writing that sometimes in its intensity recalls Janacek's great male-voice choruses and other passages that are given real vividness and urgency by a wholly personal use of brusque ostinatos. There are two passages at least where his greatness flares up unmistakably: the piercingly lyrical melody that rises in the orchestra when Amarus, banished to a monastery since childhood to conceal his parents' sin, sees two lovers embracing beneath a flowering lilac and realizes too late what his empty life has lacked; and the ambiguous epilogue, with its bells and fanfares, its harshly tender lyricism as Amarus's dead eyes stare at the lilac-blossoms, its stoic triumph. Like the Field Mass it needs a performance that distils its essence at 100 per cent proof, and Mackerras succeeds splendidly, aided in both works by choral singing of vibrant eloquence, by authoritative and characterful soloists and by a clear and spacious recording with an exceptionally precise stereo image. This and the breadth of dynamic range, of course, are most noticeable on CD, but the LP is also very good indeed; it is a pity that both place the baritone soloist in Amarus so absurdly close to the microphone. By the way, the LP and the CD are supplied with quite different documentation; even, in the case of Amarus, a different translation of the text.'