On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring - Frederick Delius

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.

“Music is an outburst of the soul.”

Mazurkas - Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin is not usually spoken of with the kind of reverence reserved for the other great Russian composers (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky), yet he certainly did as much, if not more, than his influences and protégés in expanding the sonic vocabulary of classical music. Scriabin was idiosyncratic to the core. An avowed mystic, he sought to ascend, through music, the spiritual hierarchy described by Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophists, and also composed many works inspired by Nietzsche's theories on the übermensch. Scriabin's most influential works were early experiments in atonality - increasingly eccentric experiments that were met with increasing critical ambivalence as Scriabin became ever more concerned with phenomenal conceptions of reality. His radical penultimate project, appropriately titled Mysterium, was intended to be "a grandiose religious synthesis of all arts which would herald the birth of a new world." Though it remained unfinished at the time of Scriabin's death, he believed that, when completed, Mysterium would bring about Armageddon. Yet for all of his notable wackiness, Scriabin was also a highly gifted lyrical composer. In fact, my personal favorite works of Scriabin's are among his most traditional: his études and mazurkas borrowed heavily from the mellifluous Romanticism of Chopin. This collection brings together all of Scriabin's mazurkas, composed in the early part of his career in the 1880's and 90's. This was the era of Scriabin's greatest critical acclaim; his variations on the mazurka, a form of Polish folk music, are innovative but not radical. However, they certainly do suggest the atonality that would color Scriabin's most incendiary works. I've decided to post Mazurkas because, well, they just sound so damn good. If Scriabin doesn't get the critical props afforded Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev, then perhaps it's time to reexamine our attitudes towards the Russian masters.

A sincere expression of genius.