A luminous new recording of The Dream of Gerontius

Grade: A–

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There’s a species of music-lover who enjoys pointing out that Elgar isn’t played much on the Continent – the musical equivalent of those social media bores who pop up each April to reveal that Saint George was Turkish, ackshully. It’s all rot, of course. Some of the best Elgar performances of recent years have come from Barenboim and Petrenko in Berlin; and, after all, it was Richard Strauss in Düsseldorf who put The Dream of Gerontius on the map.

And now here’s Gerontius from Helsinki. True, the conductor, Nicholas Collon, is British and I hadn’t previously had him down as an Elgarian. The choirs are a mixture of Finns and Brits (they blend well) and the soloists are about as fresh a crop as you could hope for right now. John Findon, as Gerontius, is gloriously urgent and Christine Rice is a pure-toned Angel – her voice has ‘something too of sternness’, as Newman’s text suggests. Roderick Williams is the baritone, and if you’re used to Kim Borg’s sepulchral boom on the classic Barbirolli recording, Williams’s urgency and warmth is like summer sun. Whatever else they do, these three really sing.

The orchestra is the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (of which Collon is chief conductor), and it’s a model of translucency and refinement. Forget Scandi-chic stereotypes: this is generous, affectionate playing, with a tenderness and an attention to the letter and the spirit of Elgar’s score that suggests that the Finnish musicians know (and love) this music more deeply than some would have us believe. Elgar wanted The Dream to sound worldly, not pious. The Finns make it luminous, too.