In 1971 Sir Arthur Bliss celebrated his eightieth birthday, and as a tribute to the man who had been their President for 17 years, the Performing Rights Society sponsored a Lyrita LP of his music. All the items from that record reappear on this new CD, with the exception of the short choral piece A Prayer to the Infant Jesus. Lyrita have also included the two other items which Bliss recorded for them, Melee fantasque and the three Adam Zero dances, both originally issued in collections.
Even in his late seventies Bliss was a very fine conductor, and all his performances have much character and remarkable vitality. Melee fantasque is a colourful early work, written in memory of a painter friend. Rout features a soprano soloist, the agile Rae Woodland, who sings ''a string of syllables corresponding to the scraps of song which might reach a listener watching a carnival from an open window''. Hymn to Apollo is a short invocation addressed to the god of the healing art, and Adam Zero was a 1946 Sadler's Wells ballet which portrayed man's progress from birth to death. In the longest item on his PRS record, the Serenade, Bliss handed over the baton to Brian Priestman. This four-movement work portrays the old tradition of courtship through song, and two of the movements are settings of poems by Spenser and Wotton, ardently sung by John Shirley-Quirk. Priestman conducts in a vigorous, direct manner which is remarkably similar to that of the composer, and I suspect the presence and influence of Bliss himself at the recording session.
None of these items shows the composer at his greatest, but they are all very approachable and attractive. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, a short cantata, is more austere but still very accessible. Ledger conducts a precise, expressive performance. There are occasional traces of distortion in the upper strings throughout the disc, but otherwise the transfer engineers have produced good sound.'