Crouch End Festival Chorus has partnered with Signum Records to release a long-awaited new recording of Elgar’s choral masterpiece The Kingdom on 9 May 2025. The choir is joined by soloists Francesca Chiejina (soprano), Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), Benjamin Hulett (tenor) and Ashley Riches (bass), and the London Mozart Players. The conductor is CEFC’s Music Director David Temple MBE.

Elgar composed The Kingdom in 1906 after The Dream of Gerontius and The Apostles but the work has never had the same success or recognition as its predecessors. This recording gives it a new lease of life, vividly conveying Elgar’s dramatic depiction of the lives of Christ’s apostles and the community of the early church.

The superb performances and the composer’s thrilling and lyrical writing are captured to perfection in the recently restored Victorian Theatre at Alexandra Palace, North London.

"I truly believe The Kingdom to be Elgar’s greatest choral work. It is a gem from the first note to the last. I am so taken with it and my desire to share this as widely as possible has inspired the present recording."

David Temple MBE

"I find it the most extraordinary late Elgar flowering of everything that he wrote before… in The Kingdom it’s as if he’s distilled it all."

Dame Sarah Connolly

“CEFC are one of the country’s leading symphonic choruses – alongside their work in film, games and pop music. Temple gets them to sing with passion and guts, but never at the expense of a very fine sound and the kind of flawless intonation that is hard to achieve with an ensemble of this size.

Temple considers The Kingdom, premiered in 1906, to be ‘Elgar’s best choral work’ and ‘a gem from first note to last’, and this recording is his attempt to convince the rest of us, by scraping away ‘the various layers of varnish that have coated the work over the past century.’

For David Temple, evangelist for the piece, it is mission accomplished.”

Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk