Paul Whelan (bar) Doctor Lisa Tyrrell (sop) Child Gwynne Howell (bass) Ruler Elizabeth Vaughan (mez) First Official Ann Howard (contr) Second Official Nan Christie (sop) Third Official Deborah Parry-Edwards (sop) Secretary Welsh National Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Richard Armstrong

Collins Classics CD7046-2 (two discs: 95 minutes: DDD). Notes and text included. Recorded at a performance at Welsh National Opera, Cardiff on October 5th, 1996, in association with the Arts Councils of England and Wales, the John S. Cohen Foundation and Dr David Speller

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies continues to divide the critics - even within these pages, where his oratorio Job (1997) was found "vivid" and "brilliantly characterized" by MEO, but "intolerable" by JBS. Maxwell Davies's latest and – he has declared – last opera, The Doctor al Myddfai (1996), is unlikely to convert the doubters. The only way to do that, in my view, is to go back to the composer's pure lyrical roots in a short piece like the Leopardi Fragments and patiently pursue their evolution over more than 30 years. Meanwhile, for Davies's seasoned admirers, the opera proves to be a characteristically probing addition to the canon, with much more than mere recycling of familiar gestures and structures.

Doctors of Myddfai are legendary figures with magical powers of healing, and the opera concerns one particular Doctor and his difficult relationship with the ruler of an unnamed state. As told by David Pountney's libretto, the story is an uneasy mixture of Celtic mythologizing and Kafka-esque surrealism, in which the purely personal confrontation between the principal characters, Ruler and Doctor, is more fully developed than the social context of disease and environmental damage within which the action supposedly takes place. The tale would carry more conviction if this context were more fully represented. The libretto is also very wordy in places, and the music marks time during some of the long narrations. Where it is most successful is in conveying a sense of compassion for those who suffer, rulers and ruled alike, and it manages to suggest dimensions of feeling well beyond those which the events of the opera actually portray.

The performance is a strong one, and all three principals are convincing, confident with the taxing musical idiom. Gwynne Howell is a tower of strength, and Paul Whelan, despite occasional distortions of the English text, ably conveys the Doctor's unearthly and obsessive spirit. Lisa Tyrrell sings persuasively as the Child, and the many small parts are well taken by various WNO stalwarts. Under Richard Armstrong's galvanizing direction the performance builds well to its dance-like apotheosis, and the sound is always clear, if bit cramped, with stage noise evident but unobtrusive.

Arnold Whittall