This album has a couple of things in common with yesterday's, Days Like This. It was also nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, in 1992 (which was the year I asked for it as a Christmas present from Hilary, my sister). And John Tavener, like Van Morrison, is a bit of a mystic.
But Van on Days Like This sings "And it’s so cruel to expect the saviour to save the day/ And there’s no religion, no religion, no religion here today", whereas Tavener is always devout. Being superficial when it comes to classical music, I think of Tavener in terms of a soundtrack for Tarkovsky films: in particular I think of Andrey Rublyov (it makes sense, too, that he worked with Werner Herzog on the film Pilgrimage). And I bracket Tavener in with those Estonian guys like Arvo Pärt — music for church vestibules.
I like the comment by Benjamin Britten in the CD booklet: "…[Tavener] and many others of his generation are swinging far, far away now from what I call the academic avant-garde, who have rejected the past. He and many others adore the past and build on the past."
There's also Britten's own Third Suite for Cello on the CD, but I'm even more out of my depth on that. I will just say — though it will come across like Henry in The Real Thing when he's trying to choose some music for his Desert Island Discs appearance to make him look learned, but really just wants to play Procul Harum — the Marcia: Allegro part of the suite sounds to me a bit like the guitar solo in Sound Chaser by Yes — not the notes or the melody; just the overall sound and feel.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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