The new disc starts very well with a splendidly played and recorded Fanfare, followed by a moving and beautifully sung little Prayer, written late in Bliss's career for unaccompanied female voices. He composed Morning Heroes in 1928, ''as a tribute to my brother and all my comrades-in-arms who fell in the Great War''. The hour-long work falls into five parts, using texts from sources as diverse as The Iliad, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nicholls. Most of the settings are sung by the chorus, but two longish passages use an orator. Here Groves's performance on EMI has a distinct advantage, for John Westbrook strikes just the right heroic quality in his declamations. Brian Blessed's words are not perfectly clear as recorded, and he uses for the most part a more conversational style to less effect.
In the first part, which describes a parting of man and wife in wartime, there is a more poignant quality in Groves's account, but thereafter I rather feel that Kibblewhite has the edge on the older conductor. His choirs (he is the founder and regular conductor of all three) sing with impressive discipline and commitment, and technically they are a little better than Groves's very good Liverpool chorus. In the faster sections—for instance in the brief setting of Owen's The Heroes—Kibblewhite's attack is sharper, and he brings more dramatic flare to the music. As a whole he shapes the score with a little more character than Groves, although I can imagine a performance of this impressive work which had still more tension and feeling. Cala have produced a very good recording, though in loud passages the image is less sharp than it might be, and it has a shade more presence than the 18-year-old EMI recording, good though that is too.
Groves's version is at medium-price, while Kibblewhite's disc, with the two brief extra items, is at full-price. On the whole I think it would be worth paying the extra money for the new Cala issue.'