London Philharmonic Orchestra: Glagolitic Mass

‘Always the scent of the moist forest – that was the incense’, declared Leos Janácek. ‘I felt a cathedral grow before me in the vast expanse of the hills and the vault of the sky’. For him, the whole of creation was a cause for celebration, and with its jubilant trumpets, thundering organ and raw, unbuttoned lust for life, there’s something elemental about his Glagolitic Mass – a choral work like no other. Edward Gardner prepares the way with two masterpieces wrought from ice and fire: Sibelius’s brooding Finnish legend, and the glittering musical firework display with which Lutoslawski lit up the skies of post-war Poland.