The Canterbury Pilgrims / At the Tabard Inn / In Honour of the City

"This superb offering of a full-length cantata based on the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales bears out its reputation as Dyson's masterpiece. It's a fresh, tuneful work, aptly exuberant in its celebration of Chaucer. Following the scheme of Chaucer's Prologue, the 12 movements, plus Envoi, present a sequence of portraits, deftly varying the forces used, with the three soloists well contrasted in their characterisations and with the chorus acting as both narrator and commentator, providing an emotional focus for the whole work in two heightened sequences, the sixth and twelfth movements, moving and noble portraits of the two characters who aroused Dyson's deepest sympathy, the Clerk of Oxenford and the Poor Parson of a Town. If the idiom is undemanding, with occasional echoes of Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony and with passages reminiscent of Rachmaninov's The Bells, the cantata sustains its length well. Outstanding among the soloists is Robert Tear who not only characterises brilliantly but sings with admirable fullness and warmth. The beautiful, fading close, when Tear as the Knight begins the first tale, moving slowly off-stage, is most atmospherically done. Yvonne Kenny and Stephen Roberts sing well too, but are less distinctive both in timbre and expression. The London Symphony Chorus sings with incandescent tone, superbly recorded, and the orchestra brings out the clarity and colourfulness of Dyson's instrumentation." Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

"the glory of the piece is the choruses, which are splendidly sung here...The splendid Chandos recording is fully worthy of the vibrant music-making here." Penguin Guide, 2011 edition