Do you have this record?

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/details/66450.html

Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946)
Celtic Symphony for string orchestra and six harps [19'55]
The Witch of Atlas [14'37]
The Sea Reivers Hebridean Sea Poem No 2 [3'44]
A Hebridean Symphony [35'06]
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley, conductor

Go now, slot it in your player - and select Track 8.  This depicts, from
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Witch of Atlas":

   And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
   Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
   Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
   Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
   And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
   Teasing the God to sing them something new;
   Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
   Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone

 From 0:24 - have you ever heard a theme of greater Tchaikovskian yearning
than this, soaring first on violins, then on horns, then oboe and cello?

I've had this CD for eight years, yet had never ventured beyond the lush
six-harped cascades of the Celtic Symphony.  It's a shame Bantock's music
is so unfashionable; as the CD notes say of "The Witch of Atlas" - 'the
dominant mood is that of ecstatic, sensuous longing.  In any other country
 [outside of England] such a work would have become a staple item in the
romantic orchestral repertoire.'

James Kearney
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