Charles Groves/RPO - Delius: North Country Sketches (1975) 24-Bit/96-kHz Vinyl Rip

The sound is excellent and it now gains from the immensely improved surfaces which the companies produce, absolutely silent in fact.
A Song of Summer is fairly well known; but the North Country Sketches have been lacking in the catalogue since the Beecham version was deleted (the Groves was also deleted shortly after the Beecham). These are Delius at his more austere but, like Life's Dance, they never lack the 'Delius touch' for long. Performances are most sympathetic
(Gramophone, June 1984)

In the North Country Sketches of 1913–14, Delius divides the strings into 12 parts, and harps, horns, clarinets and bassoons evoke a lifeless winter scene. In Payne's view, the Sketches are the high water mark of Delius's compositional skill, though Fenby awards the accolade to the later Eventyr (1917).
Brigg Fair (1907) announced the composer's full stylistic maturity, the first of the pieces for small orchestra which confirm Delius's status as a musical poet, with the influences of Wagner and Grieg almost entirely absent. The work was followed in the next few years by In a Summer Garden (1908), Life's Dance (1911), Summer Night on the River (1911) and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912). The critic R.W.S. Mendl described this sequence as "exquisite nature studies", with a unity and shape lacking in the earlier formal tone poems.[58] These works became part of the standard English concert repertory, and helped to establish the character of Delius's music in the English concert-goer's mind, although according to Ernest Newman, the concentration on these works to the neglect of his wider output may have done Delius as much harm as good.
The four-year association with Fenby from 1929 produced two major works, and several smaller pieces often drawn from unpublished music from Delius's early career. The first of the major works was the orchestral A Song of Summer, based on sketches that Delius had previously collected under the title of A Poem of Life and Love.[62] In dictating the new beginning of this work, Delius asked Fenby to "imagine that we are sitting on the cliffs in the heather, looking out over the sea". This does not, says Fenby, indicate that the dictation process was calm and leisurely; the mood was usually frenzied and nerve-wracking.
(wikipedia)

Performers: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves

Track Listing:

1. Delius: North Country Sketches
- Autumn: the wind soughs in the trees
- Winter Landscape
- Dance
- The March of Spring. Woodlands, Meadows and Silent Moors
2. Delius: Life's Dance
3. Delius: A Song of Summer