Performer: Samuel Hudson

At Gloucester Cathedral, works by Cecilia McDowall and Edmund Rubbra, despite their indirectness and small scale, make an impact even stronger then Beethoven.

Though musically flawed, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s choral work The Atonement is given a superb performance at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford Cathedral. 

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’ largely forgotten Symphony no. 2, "Odysseus" proves exhausting, while works by Ireland and Howells tap into rich veins of mythical wistfulness and excruciating pain.

Benjamin Britten’s 1948 cantata communicates with more invention and originality than recent works by Tabakova and Rutter.