Conceived on a grand scale, Lloyd’s late choral works build fruitfully upon his previous experience in other genres. They share with his operas an innate lyricism, natural affinity with the human voice, and feeling for the long line, while their structural balance, intensive working out of motifs, and rich orchestral palette owe a significant debt to his prolific symphonic output. Chris de Souza, writing in The Independent in 1998, described the Brighton Festival commission of A Symphonic Mass as ‘perhaps the climax’ of Lloyd’s ‘astonishing career’. In his review of the original release of the present recording, Ivan March was moved to describe the Mass as ‘one of the finest pieces of English choral writing of the twentieth century’.
