Havergal Brian: Choral Works [CD]

Although all three works recorded here were originally composed early in Havergal Brian's career, only the overture Doctor Merryheart, written in 1911-12 and premiered within months of it's completion, is entirely 'early Brian'. Of the other two, the creation of what we now know as Psalm 23, traversed 40 years, and By the Waters of Babylon is a posthumous reconstruction, done with enormous skill and idiomatic fidelity by the composer and Brian expert Rodney Newton.