The arrangements heard here are by skilled musicians such as Percy Grainger, Philip Heseltine and Eric Fenby. They were adept at distributing the main theme and other interesting passages between the two players. The works in this volume include On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, Brigg Fair and Dance Rhapsody No.1.
July 2012
****
“the Steinway concert grands seem right in your living room, lending new clarity to textures and nuances sometimes mislaid in the orchestral haze. It also helps that Simon Callaghan and Hiroaki Takenouchi, first teamed together at London's Royal College of Music, play with such love, panache, and exact synchronisation...Roll on volume two!”
June 2012
“I have, on the whole, been very impressed with the sensitive way the two performers unite on this disc, and their collective spirit for addressing the knotty musical priorities.”
July 2012
“I thought, how could such transcriptions maintain the subtle magic colours of Delius’s orchestrations? After hearing it, and with just quite minor qualifications, I had to admit that the arrangers had captured the essence of Delius’s music remarkably well.”
11th March 2012
“Delius’s music seems quintessentially orchestral, as if irreducible to any conventional “argument”, just conjured out of the air...but these six versions are certainly worth hearing, sensitively executed as they are.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
