For its 75th anniversary in 2026, The Elgar Society is releasing a clutch of recordings including this splendid survey of the composer’s choral music. It’s performed by the ever-impressive Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea under its Music Director William Vann and accompanied by Australian organist Callum Knox.

You’d imagine that Elgar’s entire oeuvre had appeared on disc by now, but Light Out of Darkness, as the album is called, includes a remarkable five world-premiere recordings. Most of these are early works: the catchy, if typically Victorian hymn Praise ye the Lord from 1878, and the first of Elgar’s seven settings of O Salutaris Hostia composed around 1877 when he was just 20 (another, from 1882, is also newly recorded here). Both possess melodic charm and both suggest the influence of Gounod, at the time highly popular with the Brits. Rosemary Clifford is the eloquent soloist in the second. The Stabat Mater from 1886 is direct and typically Elgarian with the stately Ecce sacerdos magnus, written in...