From the Back Room: Historic Delius from Toye, Barbirolli and May Harrison

The music of Frederick Delius (1862-1934) is an acquired taste, but, as the saying goes, it is a taste worth acquiring. Today's program includes fine performances by artists who were devoted to his music, almost all of which were made during the final years of the composer's life, when he was increasingly infirm and eventually blind.

On the program are orchestral works conducted by Geoffrey Toye and John Barbirolli, and the Sonata No. 1 with violinist May Harrison and pianist Arnold Bax, better known as a composer.

Geoffrey Toye Conducts

Geoffrey Toye

The name Geoffrey Toye (1889-1942) will be unfamiliar to most people, so a few words of introduction follow. He was a conductor, composer and opera producer best remembered for his leadership of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and association with Sadler's Wells. His principal composition was the ballet The Haunted Ballroom. This program includes a recording of a waltz from that work as a bonus.

As it happened, Toye's only commercial recordings were of Delius' music. These include "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" and "In a Summer Garden" with the London Symphony in 1928, and "Summer Night on the River" with the New Symphony Orchestra the following year. All are very well done, giving a good representation of the music, and are a credit to Toye's memory.

Toye died of lung damage sustained in the London blitz. The conductor Sidney Torch recorded the waltz from Toye's The Haunted Ballroom with his orchestra in 1947.

John Barbirolli Conducts

John Barbirolli

The conductor John Barbirolli (later Sir John) was a strong proponent of the composers Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Delius. He began recording in 1927; one of the first pieces he chose was Delius' "Summer Night on the River" for the National Gramophonic Society, soon followed by an HMV recording of "A Song Before Sunrise" in 1928. The latter, with the New Symphony, is included in this program.

We then jump ahead to 1948 for "Deux Aquarelles" with the Hallé Orchestra, which body Sir John conducted from 1943 until his death in 1970. The Aquarelles are arrangements for string orchestra by Eric Fenby made from two songs without words that Delius had composed for chorus in 1917. Fenby was the composer's amanuensis during his last years - and himself made excellent recordings of Delius' music in the 1970s.

May Harrison and the Sonata No. 1

May Harrison

The violinist May Harrison (1890-1959) and her sister Beatrice were close associates of Delius. He wrote his Double Concerto for them and his Violin Sonata No. 3 for May.

Arnold Bax

May recorded the Sonata No. 1 for HMV in 1929; the piano part was taken by the composer Arnold Bax, who may have being making his only recording as an instrumentalist. In any event, he is quite good - and Harrison is of course authoritative.

Although she often performed the sonata, Harrison preferred the composer's music with orchestra. "Of Delius's music nothing can to me surpass in beauty and poignancy the end of his Village Romeo and Juliet, or the beginning of Sea Drift. His chamber music is a mere drop in the ocean, so to speak, for he always thought in terms of the orchestra," she said, in a 1945 talk on the composer. The violinist Midori Komachi expands on this with reference to the Sonata: "Delius came back to his initial sketches of the Sonata in 1914, then with a mind full of orchestral sounds. Inevitably, harmonic colours and [a] stream of chromaticism are explored as if the violin and piano could sound like an orchestra."

Delius wrote his Caprice and Elegy for Beatrice Harrison. She recorded it, scored and conducted by Fenby, in 1930. It can be found in a previous collection of historic Delius performances that also includes: the Violin Concerto with Albert Sammons and conductor Malcolm Sargent; the Piano Concerto with Benno Moiseiwitsch and conductor Constant Lambert; and Lambert conducting "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring," the Intermezzo and Serenade from Hassan, and "La Calinda" from Koanga.

The download includes a 1985 issue of The Delius Journal devoted to the Harrison sisters.

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The sound on all of today's selections is quite good, even though most of them are nearly 100 years old. On a few of the disks there is some background rustle.

Addendum: reader Andrew has kindly provided a link to Ken Russell's classic film on Delius and Fenby, A Song of Summer. It's available under the name Delius as I Knew Him on YouTube.

LINK to the Toye and Barbirolli recordings

LINK to the Harrison-Bax sonata recording

Mendelssohn Special with Kletzki, Szell, Barbirolli, Borries and Celibidache

Rummaging through my collection a while back, I came across several interesting discs with the music of Felix Mendelssohn, and decided to transfer them for this post, and possibly one more to come.

Here are the details of today’s offering. The sound quality varies, but is never less than good.

Symphony No. 3 (Israel Philharmonic/Paul Kletzki). This particular record was among the first to be made by the orchestra, dating from April/May 1954. The download includes scans of an eight-page commemorative booklet included in the American Angel release. Kletzki leads a good performance, although the coda, marked Allegro maestoso assai, is more maestoso than allegro.

Symphony No. 4 (Hallé Orchestra/John Barbirolli) and Violin Concerto (Siegfried Borries; Berlin Philharmonic/Sergiu Celibidache). This coupling on RCA Victor’s Bluebird budget label combined Manchester and Berlin sessions that both transpired in February 1948. Barbirolli elicits a spruce performance from the resuscitated Hallé, which remained underpowered in the strings five years after the conductor revived its fortunes. Siegfried Borries, then the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, offers an assured reading of the concerto, with an excellent accompaniment led by Celibidache during his postwar years as the orchestra’s conductor.

Symphony No. 4 (Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell) and Music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Philharmonic-Symphony of New York/Szell). The fine Cleveland performance is from November 1947 dates in Severance Hall; the terrific New York rendition of the Midsummer Night’s Dream music is from January 1951 and Columbia’s 30th Street studio. I don’t like making comparisons, but for me the New York band of this period was second to none. This particular coupling had two different covers, both of which are in the download along with images from a 78 set and 10-inch LP.

If there is interest, I will transfer Mendelssohn overtures from Adrian Boult and Midsummer Night’s Dream excerpts from Sargent and Old Vic forces including Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann and Stanley Holloway.

George Szell blisses out to a 1951 recording session playback

Barbirolli Conducts Rubbra

Born in 1901, Edmund Rubbra was a contemporary and friend of such English composers as Gerald Finzi and William Alwyn. Like them, he wrote music that was conservative for its time.

His fifth symphony comes from 1947. This is its first recording, and the only recording of any of his symphonies for many years. (All 11 have now been recorded at least once.)

Barbirolli was a champion of this work, and the attractive record sleeve gives him the play over Rubbra - it's actually hard to read the title of the piece because the script font is reversed out of light blue.

It's an elegant package, and if the music inside is more earnest that elegant, it is well worth getting to know.