Frederick Delius is one of those delightful mystery men of classical music – a composer whose works are not generally considered part of the standard classical repertoire, yet remain influential and notable for their unusual structure. Delius’s forte was tone poetry, which was still a somewhat undeveloped area of composition immediately following the romantic era of Wagner and Mahler. Delius’s great strength was his individuality; indeed, few post-romantic composers developed a symphonic identity as distinct and unorthodox as Delius’s. Falling somewhere between the grandiosity of Strauss and the humble impressionism of Ravel, Delius’s works are, simply, some of the most pleasing and agreeable works of the early modern classical canon. His most notable piece, “On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring” is a marvel of simplicity and elegance. Wistful and slow moving, it evokes the atmosphere of springtime more charmingly than any piece this side of Grieg’s “Morning Mood”. The nine other tone poems collected here are nearly as delightful, if not so groundbreaking. If you’ve been looking for a semi-obscure composer to namedrop alongside your friends’ declarations of love for Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, Delius might just be the man for you.
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