More on The Dream of Gerontius
“The greatness of ‘Gerontius‘ is in its profound sincerity rather than its originality, in the beauty and truth of the emotion rather than in the material skill with which heavenly rapture and hellish vision are portrayed. We are told that when the people of Verona met Dante in the streets of their town they pointed to him saying: ‘There goes the man who has been to hell’. After listening to Gerontius we are apt to think that Elgar too passed through the dark valley before his time – and beyond as far as human thought or human imagination can reach.”
-Ferruccui Bonavia, violinist, writer, composer and music critic
The Listener 22 April 1943