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There was a DVD recording of La Terra Promise issued back in 2013 - I reviewed it then for MusicWeb International. The work itself was of some considerable interest, clearly influenced in places by the Berlioz Requiem, but the performance (a live relay from a Paris concert in 2012) was nothing special - some of Massenet's most extravagant orchestral demands were scaled back - and the presentation, entirely in French, was clearly not intended for an international market. I am presuming that the DVD [Codaex 3.503ro2.000402] has long been unavailable.

The Bartók scherzo from the Symphony in Eb is not the same piece as the Bartók Scherzo for piano and orchestra. The former work has formerly been available on Hungaroton SLPX11517 where it was coupled both with the latter work and Kossuth.

Many thanks to secondfiddle for the downloads of the Bliss choral works. THE BEATITUDES is a really marvellous piece by the sound of it. The Prom performance which secondfiddle supplies gives a good idea but the orchestral playing and balance is execrable - organ and percussion dominate everything, and the strings sound wispy and totally uninvolbed - and Bliss sounds as if he is having difficulties keeping things together. But Heather Harper is marvellous!

I see it is to be performed again later this year and one hopes that a modern recording will materialise as a result.

I see there has been some confusion about the recordings I posted of Harper's HEDDA GABLER and Wagner-Régeny's BURGHERS OF CALAIS and I've also received a couple of e-mails about this. I don't know precisely what happened but there seems to have been some links incorrectly posted by myself. Sorry about that.

From the earlier postings the situation seems to have been resolved (thanks!) but Act Three of HEDDA GABLER has gone missing totally. I'll try and re-post it next week and get it right this time.

Sorry, yes the composer is Edward Harper. The download was posted in response to a request which did give the composer's name, but it has now become divorced from that original posting.

Thanks for the response to my provision of the extracts from Alkestis, The lily maid and The Queen of Cornwall. I remember a lengthy discussion with Michael Hurd in the early 1980s when we discussed the possibility of a performance of The lily maid and I believe it was given some years later by a semi-professional company but I don't know if anybody recorded this. I agree that the extract from Alkestis suggests a work well worthy of revival if the rest of the score is anything like this chorus.

There remains the lamentable fact that almost nothing from the Arthurian cycle exists in any form. Since this is as far as I can see the largest single work (if you regard it as a whole) written in England in the twentieth century, this lack is even more deplorable. Hurd's book gives no extracts from either of the last two segments so it is impossible to judge their quality, but their Marxist overtones should surely present no problems to listeners today. (Incidentally I believe the two books by Hurd are really just one, the second being a revision of the first.) The scores are in the British Library I believe.