Bantock: A Pageant of Human Life; The Golden Journey to Samarkand; etc

Thanks to the efforts of both Hyperion and Chandos and, above all, the tireless work of the late Vernon Handley, many of Granville Bantock's major scores are now available on disc in first-rate performances. But there are still plenty of pieces to be explored, and this collection of his unaccompanied choral music, fills in a few more areas on the Bantock map. There are settings here of Shelley and Browning, Flecker, Whitman and Yeats, all of them couched in an unremarkable Edwardian style, but with just enough teasing chromaticisms to hint at horizons well beyond those of the conventional drawing room. In the end, as so often with Bantock, his music seems to lack the courage of its convictions. It never pushes on into the musical world that his choice of subject matter and evident love of exoticism seem to demand; the hard shell of musical respectability was too tough for him to break through.