Search - John Brownlee, Frederick Delius, Thomas Beecham :: Historical - Delius: Orchestral Works Vol 2 / Beecham, et al

Delius in Mezzotint

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 10/02/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There is not exactly a Frederick Delius controversy: Those who like him, like him; everyone else ignores him. Once, however, the fires of opinion crackled high. Certain affiliations of the composer, such as his use of Nietzsche as the text of his Mass of Life or his friendship with the playwright Strindberg, put Delius as it were in the company of the then artistic avant-garde (I speak of the fin-de-siecle). These associations endowed the music with a certain aura of daring, and for a while some critics, especially in Germany, even considered Delius one of the chief competitors of Richard Strauss. The Delius partisans in England also advocated their champion as an important figure in modern music. One of them - in his way, the most convinced of them all - organized two Delius Festivals (1929 and 1946), week-long affairs devoted to the master's big orchestral-and-choral scores, deferring much of the expense himself. This was Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Beecham, whose advocacy went beyond the Festival into an ambitious recording-program of his friend's music, much of it subsidized by The Delius Society, which Beecham himself helped to organize. At the nadir of Delius' reputation, after World War II, the memory of him dependend largely on Beecham's pioneering studio-work. Collins and Barbirolli made recordings in the LP era, and many conductors have sampled the shorter works for CD (Richard Hickox has been issuing digital realizations of the major scores for a decade), but Beecham's original go-around have remained the interpretive benchmark. Now Naxos, as part of its "Great Conductors" series, gives us remasterings of some of Beecham's original Delius platters. Volume II centers on a magnificent 1936 reading of the choral suite Sea Drift to achingly lyrical words by Walt Whitman. Beecham leads the Royal Philharmonic and the London Select Choir; John Brownlee is the perfect baritone for the solo part. Much of the Beecham-Delius collaboration has already appeared on CD on the Dutton label. Those are magnificent remasterings. The advantage of the Naxos series, comparable with Dutton in the beauty of its sound, lies in its low price. For a mere six dollars or so, one can hear directly Beecham's passionate case for this music, the wonderful warmth of the players and singers, the excitement of the event. The CD includes four shorter works: The Walk to Paradise Garden from the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, the Intermezzo from the opera Fennimore and Gerda (after a novel by the Dane Jacobsen), the tone-poem In a Summer Garden, and the early overture Over the Hills and Far Away. Maybe Delius wasn't a "great," maybe he simply tapped into a vein of late-romantic nostalgia. However the quibbling estheticians might decide it, Beecham makes us believe that this is the pure distillate of heartache and beauty. And so, while one listens, it is."

ABBEY ROAD

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 01/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Starting in 1934, the year of the composer's death, Beecham recorded three series of Delius performances at two-year rests. This disc gives us the 1936 selection together with The Walk to the Paradise Garden done in 1927. To my ears the sound here shows a distinct advance in quality over the first record in this set of reissues, enough of an advance for me to feel able to give this disc a fifth star.



The step-change in the recorded quality is down to Abbey Road, the studio in West Hampstead made famous by the Beatles. It had been custom-built to the latest ideas of the time, and seems to have satisfied even the exacting Beecham. Choral recording in those days was seen as a greater challenge than recording an orchestra, and even in 2005 I would say that the technicians managed to do an admirable job with the massive forces required for Sea Drift. The technical side of this reissue has been masterminded again by David Lennick, and he gives us an interesting little note of his own on a particular problem he faced, the consequence no doubt of the short recording takes that were imposed by the limitations of 78rpm technology. The fault had been spotted too late and only 'corrected' at the expense of introducing another problem. If Mr Lennick is letting us know what a good job he did in the circumstances I should say he has every right to do so.



The soloist in Sea Drift is the Australian baritone John Brownlee. His diction is absolutely exemplary, which is just as well since the words of the poem are not provided. Even the chorus are remarkably distinct in their enunciation once one's ears have got used to the ambience of the sound generally. As for the quality of the performances, the name of Beecham in relation to Delius probably makes much further comment superfluous. All the familiar grace and suppleness in the phrasing are here as ever, and the luscious ripe-to-overripe orchestral effects are starting to make something of their full effect thanks to Abbey Road. Beecham was to a great extent in a position to specify his own orchestral players, and few listeners will be liable to miss the special contributions of the oboe from Leon Goossens and the clarinet in the hands of Reginald Kell.



Like the first disc of the series, this record benefits from another fine and fascinating liner-note by Lyndon Jenkins, chairman of the Delius Society. The series of three discs is available at very modest cost, and I look forward to being able to report shortly that it can be recommended in its entirety."

One could hardly wish for better performances.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 07/31/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This second historic CD of works by Frederick Delius conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham offers all the items that appeared in the 1936 Delius Society volume. In addition there is Beecham's 1927 recording of "The Walk To the Paradise Garden", a recording that especially delighted Delius himself. Recorded at various times during 1936 in Studio 1, Abbey Road, the other items may be heard in slightly better sound quality than that which emerged from the first CD in this Naxos series of three. One could hardly wish for better performances. "Sea Drift" is the work and the performance to treasure here. It features the fine Australian baritone John Brownlee."