Search - Roy Henderson, Redvers Llewelyn, Frederick Delius :: The Beecham Collection: Frederick Delius

Many first ever issues of Beecham conducting Delius.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 12/26/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"More than half of the music included in this estimable CD derive from hitherto unissued recordings made at the 1934 Leeds Festival. In very acceptable sound, with a balance that favours the soloists Roy Henderson and Olga Haley, the principal works are "An Arabesque", and "Song of Sunset". Collectors have wondered about the elusive "Song of Sunset" recording for many years. Two subsequent attempts by Beecham to record this work are said to have dissatisfied him. Requests and searches for playable test copies of this 1934 Leeds Festival recording produced nothing until now. Here, from Beecham's own archives of test pressings, made available by Shirley, Lady Beecham, are heard all but the last few minutes of the 1934 performance. The missing part is provided from a 1946 recording. I understand that the missing part of the 1934 performance has since been located in the British Museum. Also included here are all the recordings of Delius songs Beecham made, accompanying the soprano Dora Labbette. The singing of this fine English soprano was not only wonderfully pure, ethereal and graceful, it also clearly conveyed the songs' texts. Happily, it recorded well, although the singer was required to turn her head away from the microphone when taking a high, loud note - as can be heard several times in "Twilight Fancies". The less said about the only orchestral item included, the better. Apparently 1938 recording techniques and venues were not kind to the special sonorities Delius created in the orchestration of his "A Mass of Life" prelude. The blurred, nebulous sound heard here produces no effect other than puzzlement."

Delius in Sunset Hues

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 01/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Frederick "Fritz" Delius (1862-1934) embodied the late-Nineteenth Century idea of the "aristocratic radical": true to his own impulses, scornful of custom and commerce, agnostic in religion and liberal in amorous affairs, he was also an esthete of the most refined sensibility who struggled to express his sense of a beautiful and sometimes tragic world in his art. Like the nature-poet Wordsworth, Delius worked within an esthetic of the epiphany: in the midst of the loud world, he finds a quiet place ("Summer Night on the River" or "The High Hills") and sets the preparatory mood; briefly but powerfully, a vision of poignant beauty emerges, in the appearance and passing of which the witness and participant finds his own moment of transfiguration. All of Delius' characteristic works represent the organic blossoming-forth and swift withdrawal of some gorgeous but evanescent phenomenon, as in his set of orchestral variations on the Yorkshire folk tune "Brigg Fair." The tune seems to emerge from hints and prognostications, the way a river or stream emerges - inconspicuously - from rills and sources in the high ground, until, after a magnificent but brief minor-key apotheosis in the full orchestra, it melts away again into the quiet texture of things. In "Tommy" (later Sir Thomas) Beecham, fortune blessed Delius with an interpreter whose essentially Pagan convictions matched his own, and who not only played his friend's music frequently in concert but began recording it in the mid-1920s, just after the introduction of electrical recording. Beecham belonged in part to the milieu of Edwardian estheticism, but unlike the followers of Ruskin and Pater he understood the relation of technics to the preservation and dissemination of art. The Delius Festival (Beecham organized two, in 1929 and again in 1946) could reach a few thousand people; recorded albums of the Delius scores, on the other hand, might reach tens of thousands. Some of these recordings went into commercial release; others, for a variety of reasons, remained in the archives. Recently Naxos released three discs of early Delius-Beecham collaborations in its historical series. Now Somm, a British label, has produced two discs of similar, sometimes overlapping, material, all of it exquisite and much of it previously unheard outside the Delius-Beecham circle. In October 1934, for example, on the occasion of the Leeds Festival, Beecham took care that his performance of the choral-orchestral "Songs of Sunset" (1911, with texts by Ernest Dowson) be recorded. This performance (supplemented by a 1946 "take" of the final song) forms the centerpiece of the program on Somm-Beecham 08, sharing the disc with a 1934 performance of "An Arabesk" (1911, with text by Jens-Peter Jacobsen) and a generous selection of songs, about half of them with orchestral accompaniment; there is also the orchestral Prelude to "A Mass of Life," Part II. The choral singing is captured with remarkable clarity, much of it being comprehensible. In his book about Delius (1946), Beecham insisted "that in no circumstances should a large number of voices be employed" for this work, as "fifty or sixty at most are enough; otherwise the extremely personal harmonic sequences tend to be muddied or blurred." The Leeds performance seems to obey the dictum. In Olga Haley, moreover, Beecham finds a mezzo solo of the requisite "voluptuous quality" who "can cope with the rich middle register of the music," while in Roy Henderson he has a baritone capable of smoothly negotiating the "vocal angularities" of some of the movements. ("Notably in 'By the Sad waters of Separation.'") The third movement, "Pale Amber Sunlight," is especially entrancing - "a truly Delian product," as Beecham writes; the woodwind parts of the orchestral accompaniment come through with much warmth. To "An Arabesk," as to "Songs of Sunset," Beecham likewise imparts an intimate feeling. The poem of "An Arabesk" is actually quite disturbing, mixing love and sacrifice (or is it murder?) in an idyllic setting. Gary Moore's transfers from the archival sources work wonders, especially with "Songs of Sunset," not previously released in any form, the recording conditions of which must have been difficult. There is occasional congestion at the climaxes where the chorus is involved but in the main the acoustic reconstruction in both "Songs of Sunset" and "An Arabesk" is a marvel. The same may be said for the songs with orchestra, recorded in February 1938. Beecham would record these again in 1947, and the result can be canvassed on a Dutton CD. This Somm-Beecham CD is a fine production, invaluable for its "Songs of Sunset," and should be acquired swiftly by Delians."