If a long, deep sigh of contentment were acceptable as a critical review I would be very happy to leave it at that. The music and the performances are utterly and equally lovely, and if a record is to be bought at this moment I cannot think of one I would more feel like buying. However, that won't do.
Surveying the part-songs with stern judicial attention one might have to admit that greater have been written. Listening again to Vaughan Williams's Te Deum for the Coronation of 1937 it might come to mind that possibly Walton wrote a less businesslike, economical one, with a touch more of the unexpected about it, for 1953. The G minor Mass might also find its detractors among those who are resistant to modal writing. Of the performances, it could be objected that some of the part-songs go a shade too slowly (the ''Serenade'', for instance), and that the intonation on the soprano line gives an occasional twinge in the Mass (as in ''simul adoratur'' and the start of the Sanctus).
But that is only playing devil's advocate. Here we have a choir in which the blend of voices is particularly good, who shade their phrases sensitively, and who preserve fine singing-tone at pianissimo and produce a good robust forte. Under the guidance of their founder, Hilary Davan Wetton, who conducts them here, they explore a rewarding repertoire; and they are well served by the recording (only when speed and volume increase at once, as in ''Love's Tempest'', does the acoustic become too reverberant, and then the choir compensate by taking extra care over the clarity of their words). As for the music, I can only say that the Elgar songs appeal more with each hearing—lovely, for instance, the third verse of My love Dwelt in a Northern land where the soprano and tenors sing in octaves with the other voices accompanying. The Te Deum is a great lifter of spirits, the Mass a masterpiece. So the disc gains a strong recommendation from this quarter, perhaps allowing one further niggle: the Agnus Dei is surely an urgent, more personal utterance than the rest of the Mass, and it calls, I think, for a more expressive, even dramatic, attack than we have here.'