This colourful and exotic setting of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem is a welcome addition to the English choral repertory. The absence of Rawsthorne's original orchestral score (destroyed in 1940 during a bombing raid) had, until 2007, prevented the performance of this extraordinary work. However, a new orchestration by Edward Harper (available on hire from Oxford University Press) has allowed Rawsthorne's dream-like evocation of an exotic land to take its
rightful place on the concert platform.