Delius: North Country Sketches; The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Dance Rhapsodies, No. 1; Dance Rhapsodies, No. 2; In a Summer Garden

COMPOSERS: Delius
LABELS: Chandos
WORKS: North Country Sketches; The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Dance Rhapsodies, No. 1; Dance Rhapsodies, No. 2; In a Summer Garden
PERFORMER: Bournemouth SO/Richard Hickox
CATALOGUE NO: CHAN 9355 DDD

Another intelligent and imaginative Delius programme from these artists, following their critically acclaimed 1993 CD of Sea Drift, etc. Hickox reveals all the intensity of the young lovers’ longing for former happiness in a thoroughly convincing and moving reading of The Walk to the Paradise Garden. It is good to have both Dance Rhapsodies together. The popular First, cast in variation form, is full of joy and vitality but with a lovely penultimate variation that moved Peter Warlock to tears. Appropriate to the more delicate and luminous textures of the Second, Hickox takes a more relaxed view than Beecham (1960) to express all the glittering and enchanting qualities of this short work. The sultry, sensuous beauty and vibrant colour of In a Summer Garden is wonderfully evoked; you can almost smell the lilies. In contrast you shiver at the chilly invocation of a Yorkshire autumn and winter in North Country Sketches, and rustling ostinati reveal an empty white landscape. A strong contender for my CD of the year. Ian Lace