Delius: Aquarelles (2)

Daniel Barenboim's sumptuous performances of English music have long been favourites and here they are beautifully remastered with state-of-the-art technology for this release. Pinchas Zukerman's performance of The Lark Ascending is surely a stand-out among recordings of this work ('beautifully played, highly sympathetic performance' said Gramophone). What's more, the addition of Vaughan Williams's Tuba Concerto, making its first international appearance on CD, fills out this generous CD and collects together all of Barenboim's recordings of English music on one CD.

With the sublime The Lark Ascending as its centrepiece, this collection illustrates the way that Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries expressed their national identity, drawing inspiration from folk song, landscape, poetry and the rich history of British music. With favourites by Elgar, Delius, Butterworth and Walton––including Elgar’s unforgettable Introduction and Allegro and Delius’s Summer Night on the River––the works gathered here are romantic, nostalgic and quintessentially British.

The music of Delius has been recorded consistently ever since electrical recordings began, noticeably by conductor Thomas Beecham. This disc brings together a fascinating mix of familiar and less familiar Delius works, recorded on rare 78s between 1929-1955 by other devoted Delius interpreters such as John Barbirolli and Eugene Goossens.

Frederick Delius had a strong champion in the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who praised the composer as “the last great apostle of romantic beauty in music”. This rhapsodic intensity of feeling is nowhere more evident than in the luscious harmonies of his exquisite idylls, The Walk to the Paradise Garden and On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring. La Calinda, from Delius’ second opera, Koanga, has achieved worldwide popularity