The set of ‘Four Carols for Dark Times’ was written between 2003 5 and commissioned at the rate of one piece per year for the Birmingham Bach Choir to perform at their Christmas concerts. The third carol, entitled Carol, wasinserted later to provide a ‘scherzo’ movement to provide balance to the set.

The poems are all by that extraordinary Welsh priest-poet R S Thomas (1913 2000) whose poetry speaks to the composer “with a directnessunmatched by any other 20th century poet”. Thoma...