to reverse. The third movement, "FINALE.Three Worlds" (after M.C. Escher and with a title also referring to a visual work depicting reflections in water) is also subdivided into three sections: (i) PROLOGUE "A Future IN MEMORIAM"; PERPETUUM MOBILE: and EPILOGUE "In a Country Churchyard" (which is referring to the famous poem by Thomas Gray evoking yet again the idea of "eclogues from a vanished land" which pervades the whole composition). Symphony No.7 in G minor ("Athonite") lasts for one hour, and is in three movements: I "Pilgrimage", II "Ek Batheon" (the Greek, Έκ βαθέον, meaning "from the depths", or in Latin, "de Profundis") and III FINALE "The Garden of the Panaghia", referring to the Greek Orthodox monastic idea that the peninsula Mount Athos (Άγιον Όρος, Agion Oros) forms a garden for the all-holy one, the Theotokos, or Mother-of-God. Strutt being a member of the society The Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA) has made many visits to Mount Athos, finding it a holy place of inspiration. The symphony was conceived in the early 1990s, but not scored until 2003. "Pilgrimage", the title of the first movement, simply represents the feelings of a visiting pilgrim to the Holy Mountain. "Ek Batheon" however is a much more profound study of the torments of the soul experienced by the solitary hesychast, or hermit, living in utter and total simplicity and wrestling with temptation, arrested by the attempts of the devil to conquer him. In this movement the orchestra is divided into two parts, and the musical events portray a terrifying state of mind. The last movement includes a boys' and men's chorus who sing six of the Orthodox Apolytikia of the Resurrection, and is an attempt to portray the beauty and peace of the Holy Mountain as it appears to an outside visitor. The Symphony No. 8 ("Orkney Choral Symphony") sees the composer back on home ground – Orkney – where he has lived since 1970. More of a song cycle, the seven movements are settings of Orcadian poetry. The movements are: I-PROLOGUE:"Orkney Summer"(SONNET I), the text by Robert Rendall;II SONG 1: "Cataface" (the Scots for the short-eared owl), to text by Harriet Campbell; III-LAMENT:"The Brig o' Waithe", the text by Ann Scott-Moncrieff describing the civilian casualty in World War II Britain when a German aircraft returning to base after attempting to attack Scapa Flow randomly released its bombs over Orkney; IV-SONG 2 "Sleep!