Ian Crisp:

>The World's Ransoming is a single-movement piece that combines a long and
>sinuous lament for cor anglais with familiar MacMillan devices

As it happens, Colin Davis just performed this with the New York
Philharmonic, in a performance reviewed very favorably by Allan Kozinn in
today's New York Times.  He says of the orchestral part that it "includes
eerie, shimmering string writing, brass chorales and percussion that grows
from the gently tactile to the pounding."

Jim Tobin