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This second survey of Grainger's music for the wind orchestras he loved contains several of the largest stretches of music he wrote.
The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart is perhaps the most interesting of these, with its far-off sonorities and slow, gloomy portrayal of the clash between the mass and the individual, but the 1948 arrangement of "Marching Song of Democracy" is hardly less powerful and stirring. The version of the "Irish Tune from County Derry", one of the folk tunes Grainger was almost incapable of letting alone, is arranged for wind orchestra and pipe organ, and is entirely distinct from the earlier arrangement on Volume Four (CHAN9549), as is the version of "Hill Song No. 2", here given with the longer and more sombre "Hill Song No. 1" from which it was boiled down. As before, the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra give these fascinating works the subtle, stylish performances they deserve, treating their occasional brashness as just one of the bases Grainger's inventive writing for wind could touch. --
Roz Kaveney
