Reviewed by Trevor Kirk

It’s not very often that I get to review an oratorio and as a frustrated choral singing enthusiast who these days has to content himself with Roger Jones’ musicals (no offence Roger, but it’s not the same as “Olivet To Calvary”), I approached this with interest. Cuthbert is one of the great saints of English Christian history, a native Northumbrian who heard the divine call to do an Abraham and leave his hermitage and go to Holy Island to become Bishop of Lindisfarne, and whose shrine in Durham Cathedral has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries. His life had nary a dull moment, thanks to plagues, war and other various struggles, and the mood of this piece is appropriately dramatic, with Will Todd’s music and Ben Dunwell’s libretto combining to give the soloists, singers and orchestra plenty to get their teeth into; Patricia Rozario as the Angel is particularly effective. Well worth investigating.

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