JOHN TAVENER Eternity's Sunrise. Song of the Angel. Petra: A Ritual draem. Sappho. Funeral Canticle The Academy of Ancient Music, Paul Goodwin

I have so much enjoyed working with The Academy of Ancient Music and we have together produced what seems to me a very interesting disc. In one sense, all of this music confronts Death, Love, and Eternity: death of a beloved father in Funeral Canticle; Sappho's exquiste longings for her love in Sappho: Lyrical Fragments; and Seferis showing his long Odyssean voyage on rotten timbers to those islands ever so slightly out of reach in Petra. And, then, the mystery of Eternity: Blake's Eternity's Sunrise and the Song of the Angel. In the words of St. Isaac the Syrian: "When we reach love, we have reached God; our road is ended and we have crossed to the Island which is beyond the world."

John Tavener