Delius

Tasmin Little's 2013 release on Chandos is an exploration of lush and lyrical music for violin and orchestra, composed by the leading British composers of the early 20th century, and it is an album of remarkable depth and beauty. Opening the program is the Concerto for violin & orchestra by E.J. Moeran, which sets the mood for the disc with its long-breathed, melancholy lines and pastoral atmosphere. While this is a technically challenging work that shows Little to her best advantage as a virtuoso, listeners may come away from the piece recalling its sweet ambience more than its flashiness. The same could also be said for Frederick Delius' Légende, Gustav Holst's A Song of the Night, and Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, all three of which provide tests for the violinist's skills, yet are filled with such gorgeous music that listeners may only remember the general opulence of the scores. Also included are premiere recordings of Roger Turner's arrangements of Edward Elgar's Chanson de matin, Chanson de nuit, and Salut d'amour, which in orchestration, mood, and style fit the rest of the album nicely.

Meredith Davies's great quality is his inspired pacing of a score that can easily stagnate. Davies sets the love-duets in dramatic contrast to the vigorous writing…Elizabeth Harwood and Robert Tear are both excellent as Vreli and Sali, winningly characterful and clearly focused…[Shirley-Quirk] is firm and forthright with an apt hint of the sinister.

Beethoven reputedly wasn't Beecham's favorite composer, but you wouldn't know it from this performance; it's exceedingly well conceived, highly energetic, and has that unique Beecham sparkle to it. The fillers also are delightful. All recorded in Ascona, Switzerland in 1957.

Hyperion’s record of the month for January presents, for the first time, the original version of Delius’s Piano Concerto. Two years after completing this work in 1904, Delius recast it, rejecting the third movement and reorganizing other material. Perhaps thinking that the solo part wasn’t sufficiently pianistic, Delius also consulted a friend, the Busoni pupil Theodor Szántó, who rewrote the piano part in virtuoso style (with Delius’s ultimate approval). It is the Szántó version that has, until now, always been performed. With Delius’s original, characteristically refined orchestration also restored (from the orchestral parts that survive from the first performance in 1904), we can now hear this work as the composer envisaged before the involvement of another hand.

29th January 2012 sees the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Frederick Delius. To celebrate this occasion, Decca will release, on 24th January 2012, a special 8CD Commemorative Special Edition Box Set, containing many of the greatest Delius recordings on Decca, featuring a great cast of artists and performers, including Thomas Hampson, Julian Lloyd Webber, the Fitzwilliam Quartet, London Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner & Sir Charles Mackerras.

This is only the third commercial recording of AMass of Life. The previous two recordings were the 1952 Beecham (no longer available) and the 1971 Groves on EMI. You might imagine modern recording would best place this vast canvas between your loudspeakers. And yes, Hickox's dynamic peaks are marginally higher, his perspectives marginally wider and deeper. Actually, some of this has as much to do with Hickox's own pacing and shading as the engineering.

Roderick Williams heads up the cast for this new recording of Delius' A Mass of Life with the Bergen Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. Accompanied by soloists Gemma Summerfield, Claudia Huckle and Bror Magnus Todenes, the Bergen Philharmonic Choir and Edvard Grieg Kor join Collegium Musicum Choir to complete the tour de force needed to perform and record this monumental work.