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Worldes Blis has never lost the notoriety of its 1969 Proms premi´re, when the walkout lasted almost as long as the work itself. Listening to it now, it seems likely the unprepared audience was more bored than provoked. Not that you should be. This is a work whose steady accumulation of sound over its first 20 minutes makes for a riveting experience when played as well as it is here. Stay with the music--its progress is unrelenting, not least in the closing stages where the "death chord", from Davies's near-contemporary opera
Taverner, makes its black hole-like presence felt. Davies went on to write the score for Ken Russell's film
The Devils, and the same aura of death and destruction hangs over this piece. If all this sounds masochistic, you'll certainly feel like one after hearing
The Turn of the Tide, Davies's well-intentioned but dreadfully ham-fisted work for amateur performance, which serves as coupling. Play it once, then forget it: chances are, however, you'll be blown away by
Worldes Blis and soon come back for more.
--Richard Whitehouse
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