In the latter years of the nineteenth century, England was at its apogee as an imperial power and, as every Englishmen at the time knew, the foundation of that power was the royal navy. In those days, a land army was a fine thing for European wars, but you couldn't beat a navy for projecting imperial power -- and nobody could beat the royal navy. An Irish Protestant of English lineage, composer Charles Villiers Stanford deeply appreciated the royal navy -- who else could bring an English army across the Irish Sea to put down the an Catholic rebellions? -- and his three most popular choral-orchestral works amply prove the sincerity of his appreciation. Written in a style that recalls Brahms at his most harmonically conservative and Verdi at his most rhetorically bombastic -- think of Brahms' Triumphlied fused with Verdi's Requiem and you'll have some idea what to expect -- Stanford's The Revenge: A Ballade of the Fleet, Songs of the Sea, and Songs of the Fleet are simple, direct, and straightforward musical appeals to patriotism. On this spectacular 2006 super audio digital recording, all three works are given stirring performances by the BBC National Chorus and
Orchestra of Wales led by
Richard Hickox with Canadian
Gerald Finley as the baritone soloist. In sound that resounds from the North Sea to the antipodes,
Hickox and his forces perform yeoman's duties in making these imperial works as powerfully effective as humanly possible. Although their patriotism might strike more recent audiences as sentimental, in these performances at least, Stanford's choral-orchestral maneuvers may still bring a tear to some eyes.