This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Reviews:

It’s very fitting that during the four-year period when we continue to commemorate the centenary of World War I there should be a new and long overdue recording of Morning Heroes. Sir Arthur Bliss volunteered for the army in August 1914 and he served with distinction in the trenches in war-time France. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and in 1918 he was gassed at Cambrai. All this, and the carnage he witnessed all around him, made an ineradicable impression on him. However the most grievous blow was the loss of his younger brother, Kennard, who was killed in action on 28 September 1916 at Thiepval; he was just 24. After the war was over Bliss returned to France to find his brother’s grave but this pilgrimage failed to lay Kennard's ghost. In his notes for the earlier recording of Morning Heroes by Sir Charles Groves, Felix Aprahamian writes that Bliss began to suffer from nightmares in 1928; these must have been a manifestation of the psychological effects of the war. Finally, the opportunity came to commemorate his brother with a commission for a major choral work for the 1930 Norwich Festival. The result was Morning Heroes, scored for orator, chorus and orchestra. Bliss himself conducted the first performance. The score is dedicated ‘To the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle.’

Morning Heroes is an ambitious score and its construction is rather unusual in that two of its five movements are for orator with orchestra – though, as we shall see, the accompaniment in the second spoken movement is sparse indeed. A choral finale follows the second spoken section; together these two sections constitute the fifth movement. In the centre of the work are three movements for chorus and orchestra. Bliss assembled an anthology of texts; his sources include Homer’s epic Greek poem, The Iliad; Whitman’s Drum Taps; the eighth century Chinese poet, Li Tai Po; and poems by two twentieth century poets, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols.

Bliss’s scoring – if we can call it that – is astonishingly original and imaginative here. There is virtually no accompaniment to the orator’s recitation save for timpani rumbling ominously in the background like distant, menacing guns. Only once – at “Exposed!” – do the drums play loudly and that’s terrifying. What a masterstroke it is for Bliss to reintroduce the orchestra as the orator recites Owens last line, “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?” The woodwind play melancholy, lilting material from the first movement and the effect is very moving. The chorus then sing Robert Nichols’ Dawn on the Somme. The music begins quietly, almost like a hymn, but gradually the intensity increases as Nichols’ ‘morning heroes’ are saluted. If this music sounds like a glorification of heroism then who better than Bliss to write in this vein? After all he had been through he was surely entitled to celebrate heroism. Yet the work ends on a subdued, pensive note and that too feels eminently right.

Morning Heroes is a work of great stature and I find it very moving indeed. There’s no doubt at all that this new Davis recording is now a clear first choice for this fine score.

The “filler” is interesting – and relevant. Bliss wrote Hymn to Apollo in 1926 in gratitude to Pierre Monteux for his early championship of A Colour Symphony. Indeed, it was Monteux who gave the first performance, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It seems that very early on Bliss was dissatisfied with the work but he didn’t get round to revising it until 1964. Sir Andrew offers the original version of the score, recording it for the first time.

This is a splendid disc. The performance standard is extremely high and Ralph Couzens’ engineering is excellent. Similarly excellent are the notes by Andrew Burn. Bliss devotees should acquire this as a matter of urgency and other collectors are strongly urged to hear this eloquent musical commemoration of the fallen of World War I. On this evidence Sir Andrew Davis appears to be a doughty champion of Bliss. I hope he may record more of his music in the future: might we hope, at last, for a modern recording of The Beatitudes?

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This new recording is a revelation for its clarity (notably of the composer's vivid orchestral palette and imaginative choral writing), coherence and sheer emotional intensity.

– Gramophone

Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus surpasses Sir Charles Groves's fine 1974 EMI Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra account with urgent tempos, choral singing of full tone and incisive attack, eloquent orchestral playing, and an excellent, open recording.

– BBC Music Magazine