Delius: Irmelin Prelude

The best-loved and most popular works by Frederick Delius, performed by the world’s leading artists, in an accessible format at budget price as part of the ESSENTIAL CLASSICS series.

‘Whatever should I do without Beecham?’ Delius said. “I should be content with a few superlative performances like these every year, rather than the mediocre ones I too often hear.” These final stereo recordings are the summation of Beecham's devotion to a composer whose music he loved deeply.

Frederick Delius (1862-1934) was born in Bradford of parents who had been born in Germany. His father was a successful wool merchant and although he allowed his son to study music he did not regard it as a career option. On leaving school he therefore joined the wool company but he proved unreliable; he did, however, visit Norway and Paris on the firm’s business and met life-long friends. In 1884 he was allowed to go to Florida as an orange grower. This gave him freedom from family pressures – he neglected the oranges but studied music and was greatly influenced by the music of the plantation negroes. He developed one of the most individual and easily recognisable harmonic and melodic styles of composition. He was strongly supported by the eminent conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, who gave numerous performances of his work and clearly established an appreciation for it amongst its listeners. Some critics have remarked that whilst his formula for composition was artistically successful it was so but within a strictly defined and narrow emotional and expressive range – certainly this is borne out by the popularity of the shorter works which form the vast majority of this collection, especially the exquisite sensuous idylls catching the lights, sounds, perhaps even the smells of the English countryside.

His last ten years were blighted by illness and in 1928 Eric Fenby became his amanuensis thereby enabling the composer to complete a number of works including A Song of Summer.

He died virtually a recluse in Grez-sur-Loing and, as French law forbade his burial in his garden, his remains were removed from Grez’s cemetery after a year and moved to Limpsfield in Surrey.

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