Frederick DELIUS (1862-1934)
Hiawatha - tone poem (1888) [17:21]
Suite for violin and orchestra (1888) [17:34]
Légende for violin and orchestra (1895) [7:41]
Double Concerto for violin, viola and orchestra (1915) arr. Lionel Tertis
[7:41]
Caprice and Elegy for viola and orchestra (1930) arr. Lionel Tertis
[7:41]
Philippe Graffin (violin); Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola)
BBC Concert Orchestra/David Lloyd-Jones
rec. Colosseum, Town Hall, Watford, 6-8 Jan 2009. DDD
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7226 [71:57]
Frederick DELIUS (1862-1934)
Lebenstanz (1901 rev. 1912) [13:17]
Irmelin suite (1890-92) [15:20]
A Poem of Life and Love (1918) [17:04]
A Village Romeo and Juliet suite (1890-92) [21:59]
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/David Lloyd-Jones
rec. RSNO Centre, Henry Wood Hall, Glasgow, 13-14 Sept 2010. DDD
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7264 [68:06]
It seems sensible to survey these two discs together. Same composer - all
orchestral music. Some 140 minutes of music much of it new except to fanatical
enthusiasts who may have heard alternative private recordings. In the case
of the violin suite they will have known of the Unicorn DKPCD9040 of
Ralph Holmes playing the violin and orchestra works.
Life's Dance is a Straussianly exuberant extravaganza with the
closest parallels being the more tumultuous episodes in the North Country
Sketches. There are Delius hallmarks (try the Seadrift moment at
4:28) but this is often more in the manner of early Bax. Speaking of whom
... Bax wrote several tone poems with that sort of title at about the same
time as this Delius piece. Can we hear them? This Delius work is rapturously
ardent - it might almost be by Korngold.
The Irmelin suite is as edited and arranged by Beecham. It runs
to five movements: a rather lovely breathily-pulsed Allegretto and
Moderato, a stern Maestoso and a magically poised Lento
introduced by harp in the manner of the Hassan music but spliced with
Grieg. Finally there’s a honeyed and eloquent Moderato speaking
of contented lovers.
The most mature work here is the Poem of Life and Love from
the last year of the Great War. It quickly rises to a sumptuous climax before
returning to a mix of voluptuous musing and forward-moving delight. This and
Life's Dance present the face of a Delius not drowsing and becalmed
in a summer garden.
Trust David Matthews to have arranged a suite from A Village Romeo and
Juliet thus making accessible a more generous swathe of music than
is afforded by the classic Walk to the Paradise Garden. This sequence
of four movements works well dramaturgically speaking. It’s a version
of the original suite which was also contributed to by Carl Davis here further
refined by the present conductor who has elided the famous Walk and
substituted the final impassioned pages of the opera including a skittishly
passionate violin solo. When will we get a reissue of Vienna Mackerras recording
of the complete opera on CD and DVD. It’s much needed.
The liner notes inform and exhort in peerelss fashion and are by Paul Guinery
and Martin Lee-Browne.
The second disc includes four pieces for soloist(s) and orchestra alongside
the 1888 tone poem Hiawatha. Robert Threlfall who prepared this
performing edition has wrought a wonderfully transparent skein of sound for
David Lloyd-Jones and his BBC orchestra to illuminate. The music describes
a steadily ascending spiral flight in Delius's most diaphanous and least congested
manner. It's a lovely Tchaikovskian work. There's nothing you might recognise
as specifically native American about the piece. Rather it has much in common
with the style of the Florida Suite and the Sleigh Ride. This
is a most attractive piece in Delius's earliest and lambently romantic style.
It's a small step from the light-suffused final pages of Hiawatha into
the gracious old style caramel and Kreisler romance of the four movement Suite.
Early it may be - same year as Hiawatha when composer was just 26 -
but one can catch echoes and pre-echoes of the Violin Concerto alongside those
of the Taneyev suite, the Tchaikovsky, the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole
and the Glazunov - all cognate works. The Légende, although
from seven years later, might easily be a spare movement from the Suite
with its Kreisler chops. Graffin is well up to the mark - lushly calorific
and sweet of tone. The Double Concerto in the violin-viola edition
by Tertis is a step-change by comparison. Every bar is freighted with the
honey of summery nostalgia. Bradley and Graffin surrender to its rapturous
communing and mutual confiding. Lastly comes the very late Caprice and
Elegy which we know from the famous recording by Beatrice Harrison
- such a pity there are no recordings of Harrison in the Delius Concerto or
the Double. This sultry bipartite wonder of a piece is again as arranged by
Lionel Tertis. The harp is lovingly lime-lighted in the slow pulse of the
Caprice while the Elegy moves just as slowly and thoughtfully.
The melodiously nasal tone of the viola registers most poignantly. This is
a consummately communicated performance.
This all reminds me that the impending November contingent of Dutton releases
will include a work in collegiate sultry spirit to the Double Concerto - Arthur
Benjamin's Romantic Fantasy for violin, viola and orchestra which although
dedicated to Bax could just as easily have been written in loving memory of
Delius. The Benjamin is a superb work which I discovered through the Heifetz
recording but the genius of which only came fully home to me with a broadcast
tape of the De Pasquale brothers playing along side the Philadelphia conducted
by Ormandy - would that the latter would be issued on disc!
There we are then: almost 140 minutes of 'new' Delius. OK so some of it is
as arranged by Tertis but it is still mightily impressive in the hands of
the soloists and Lloyd-Jones. The latter is a most eloquent and insightful
interpreter of Delius's elusively romantic music.
Rob Barnett
Mightily impressive in these hands.