John Noble was a fine Pilgrim on the old Boult recording, but Gerald Finley brings not only a voice that's as good and well suited but also a dramatic quality that is more colourful and intense. But Boult's cast is very strong, with several of the short parts, such as the Herald (Terence Sharpe) better sung than as here (Robert Hayward).
In the Valley of Humiliation the voice of Apollyon comes as an amplified sound from off-stage, but on record the trick is to catch an overpowering terror, and this they managed better on EMI, partly by virtue of having Robert Lloyd to strike it, and also by the producer's decision to bring it closer. Nor, in the comparison, is there any sense of a confrontation of 'bright young feller' and 'grand old fuddyduddy'.
Boult doesn't sound like an old man, any more than Hickox sounds like a youngster.
Hickox has a big canvas for the recorded sound, and achieves a clearer texture from EMI.
The newer version also has Gerald Finley, and is a fine performance anyway.

Many decades in gestation, this opera (described by the composer as a 'Morality') eventually saw the light of day in 1951. It follows fairly closely the contours of John Bunyan's well-known extended parable about the Christian life; here Richard Hickox and the Chorus and Orchestra of Covent Garden provide the support for Gerald Finley as a profound and convincing Pilgrim.