Elgar's great interpreter Sir Adrian Boult once described the composer's masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius as "the work of a raw amateur" compared with the last of his oratorios. In reality, The Kingdom - written in 1906 as the second part of a trilogy begun with The Apostles three years earlier - holds the attention only sporadically, whereas Gerontius grips throughout. It is hard not to feel that Elgar abandoned the New Testament project after The Kingdom, at least partly because his heart was not in it.

But this confident performance by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Owain Arwel Hughes made a respectable case for the piece. Hughes channelled the gigantic electrical surges that intermittently charge the music, and the Bournemouth Chorus delivered some perfectly defined soft tone, while also meeting the mighty climaxes head-on.

The soloists made a decent showing, though the contralto part of Mary Magdalene ideally needs bigger guns than Hilary Summers could muster on this occasion, and bass James Rutherford's Peter sounded benign rather than authoritative. Tenor Tom Randle brought a level of commitment that allowed John to aspire to a higher level in the audience's consciousness than the part usually reaches, but both soloists and chorus would have been wisely backed up by a text printed in the programme, inexplicably absent here.

The final impression is of a work containing too much picturesque detail and not enough drama, like illustrations in a Sunday school Bible. Even Elgar's rarely paralleled skills in harmony and orchestration register as a sauce from the finest kitchen poured over an indifferent meal. There's a sense of conventional piety - even dutifulness - about the result that lingers after some momentarily thrilling effects have passed into silence.