Although he had initially declined the commission, Delius was persuaded to write the incidental music for Hassan by the actor and director Basil Dean in July 1920, for performances he was planning for His Majesty’s Theatre, London, the following year. Much of the music was drafted within a few weeks, and the score would eventually prove one of the greatest successes of Delius’s career. Dean’s plans for the project encountered significant obstacles and delays, however, and he had to commission additional music from Delius to cover the production’s complex scene changes. The London première eventually took place on 20 September 1923 and was a critical sensation.

Flecker’s play is a sinuous double-narrative that intertwines the twin stories of the lovelorn but worldly-wise Hassan, confectioner at the court of the cruel and vindictive Caliph Haroun al Rashid (called Haroun ar Rashid in Flecker’s play), and the young lovers Pervaneh and Rafi, caught up in the aftermath of a failed uprising and condemned to a terrifying and brutally protracted death. In tone and setting, Flecker’s text drew on nineteenth-century English translations of One Thousand and One Nights as well as other heavily fictionalized accounts and travel literature. Very much a product of the racial and class-based attitudes of its time, the play revels in imaginary scenes of a despotic Eastern court and its gruesomely barbaric practices.

Contains Delius' most essential statements. Summer Night on the River, On Hearing the First Cuckoo, Brigg Fair and the Irmelin Prelude are simply magical in their effect, and Beecham's interpretations arise out of the depths of the music itself... passages such as the introduction to Brigg Fair, seem to be outside time, one yet again wonders at the poetic rightness of every nuance, the delicately exact textural balance. His identification with the composer is so complete that one is not sure whom to credit for some features... This (collection) must surely be recognised as a gem. Sleigh Ride and the Marche Caprice are entertaining enough, but all the rest are wonderful Delius - and conducted by someone who has remained the one and only Delius interpreter. Each performance is superb. (Gramophone)

The year 2005 marked the bicentennial anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, whose's writing has been the treasury of the world. Internationally renowned tenor Poul Elming compiled an album of Lieder by great composers inspired Andersen's poetry.

This keenly anticipated album from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson features two of the greatest British works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. Elgar’s ground-breaking work, commissioned for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra and premièred in 1905, is inspired by the baroque concerto grosso, and features a solo string quartet contrasted with the full symphonic string section. These orchestral forces were also adopted by Herbert Howells in his Concerto for String Orchestra, from 1938. Delius’s Late Swallows is the only piece not originally composed for string orchestra; it was arranged (from the slow movement of Delius’s String Quartet) by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby. Recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD, and digitally in Spatial Audio.

REVIEW:

As ever, the brilliance of the playing makes this essential listening, the precision and attention to detail alive and exhilarating. The entire disc holds the listener in its grip, but the last movement of the Elgar, urgent and impassioned, has you on the edge of your seat: a tour de force.

-- Guardian (UK)

A MusicWeb International Recommended Recording

I think that this is tenth disc to be issued by Chandos in their series of recordings by The Sinfonia of London under John Wilson. All are Super Audio CDs recorded at 24 bit/96 kHz, and in order to appreciate the full glory of the sound, it is necessary to play them through an SACD player, although I hasten to add that they will reproduce at CD quality when played through a standard CD player. If you have multi-channel Hi-Fi, the extra fullness of surround sound can also be experienced.

Given that the Sinfonia of London was re-established in 2018 as a recording orchestra, staffed by top players from British and international ensembles, the superb ensemble playing is not surprising, and the Chandos recording engineers have given it the very fullest of service...A mildly reverberant acoustic provides a perfect cushion for the orchestra, and, as elsewhere, the strings in the vigorous outer movements of the Howells Concerto are splendid in their unanimity and fullness of tone. The necessarily less aggressive playing in the slow movement has a lovely bloom to the playing.

The disc closes with a fine performance of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, and as in the Tallis Fantasia, I soon became aware of the extremes of dynamic achieved. This lovely, utterly memorable work is so familiar that I just sat back and let it wash over me.

The presentation of the SACD is up to Chandos’ normal high standards, with a detailed analysis of the gestation and structure of each work (particularly of the Howells) and a history of the orchestra, accompanying a brief biography of John Wilson, all in English, French and German.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

Following the success of 10 Famous Cathedral Organs, this release Includes more Famous Cathedral organs with splendid sound. The Cathedrals are Westminster, Winchester, Salisbury, Hereford, Wells, Liverpool Anglican, St. Giles Edinburgh, Coventry and also King's College Chapel. Westminster Abbey, York Minster.

The String Quartet in E minor by Ethel Smyth, one of the most innovative and original figures in English music, has a masterful coherence and consistency. With eloquent writing for the viola in particular, it is both playful and reverential, and ends with a flourish – forthright, bold and uncompromising, like Smyth herself. Delius wrote the early String Quartet in 1888 but it was rejected for performance and he was later to reuse the Scherzo for his mature Quartet of 1916–19. In 2018 the score of the two opening movements of the 1888 Quartet, long assumed lost, reappeared at auction and have been edited and reunited with the final two in this premiere recording, which adds significantly to our understanding of Delius’s early compositional directions.

REVIEWS:

A Delius discovery is brought to life with compelling musicianship…The Villiers Quartet gives it a fine first recording, captured in warm and well-balanced sound.

-- The Strad

Full marks to the Villiers Quartet for bringing this new and challenging repertoire to life.

-- Gramophone

...what I like about this quartet very much is its questing nature – this is a kind of musical laboratory for Delius to test out ideas, nascent harmonies and textures that would define his mature music in the years ahead.

-- MusicWeb International

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the release of Gardens, Fables, Prisons, Dreams, eight first recordings of music by Penelope Thwaites paying homage to “the heroes, the witty wordsmiths, the dancers, the poets, and the visionaries; and two great composers” who have influenced her musical life. Thwaites is joined by fellow pianist Benjamin Frith for the exuberant six- part A Lambeth Garland, the enchanting eight-part retelling of Oscar Wilde’s fable The Selfish Giant and Thwaites’ arrangement of Delius’s In a Summer Garden, the first to be made for two pianos. She is heard with John Mills (violin) and Bozidar Vukotic (cello) on Vijay’s Fable, drawn from her culture-fusing score for Indian choreographer Vijaylakshmi Subramaniam, and the atmospheric Mazurka: au Tombeau de Chopin. The Tippett Quartet contribute three memorable performances: Jan Palach’s Theme, recalling the self-immolating student protestor against the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia; For Irina, a tribute to dissident Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya who survived imprisonment but died of cancer in 2017; and with double bassist Laurence Ungless for To the Hills, a string quintet version of Thwaites’ earlier choral setting of Psalm 121. Since her 1974 London debut at Wigmore Hall, she has performed in more than 30 countries, and is internationally known as an acclaimed pianist and editor of The New Percy Grainger Companion (Boydell Press, 2010), the standard reference book on performing his music.

'If you want to know who, for me, is the greatest living composer, I'll tell you without hesitation - it's Elgar, whom I place on the same level as my idols Beethoven and Brahms!' So said the great virtuoso Kreisler.' Nicolas Dautricourt continues: 'This Concerto, with it's unbridled lyricism and unique proportions, is an Everest for any violinist.' In this, his first recording for Channel Classics, the French violinist brings together three works by two English composers. In 1888, in the same year Elgar wrote the famous Salut d'amour for his fiancee Caroline Alice Roberts, Frederick Delius composed his Suite for Violin and Orchestra, one of his very first works. The Suite, which only received it's premiere in 1984, is heard here in this insightful arrangement by Frederic Chaslin for violin, piano and string quartet.