Eleanor Houston (soprano)
Jess Walters (baritone)
Harry Danks (viola)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard)
Conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
In 1902, at the height of his powers, Delius wrote a one-act opera, to a French libretto, for a competition; but the work was neither performed nor published. Thirty years later Delius' thoughts turned again to the opera; and though he was blind and paralysed, with the help of Eric Fenby (to whom Delius dictated his last works) he adapted parts of it to words by Whitman beginning: ' Once I passed through a populous city.' The work that resulted was an extended and impassioned love duet; it was given the title of Idyll and performed for the first time at a Promenade Concert in 1933. Berlioz said that in his ' symphony in four movements with viola solo he had woven round the solo part a series of scenes drawn from his memories of wanderings in the Abruzzi. The association with Childe Harold's Pilgrimage arose because there seemed to be about the whole symphony ' a poetic melancholy worthy of Byron's hero.' The titles of the movements are: Harold in the Mountains-Scenes of melancholy, happiness, and joy; March of the Pilgrims singing the evening prayer; Serenade of an Abruzzi mountain-dweller to his mistress; Orgy of brigands -Reminiscences of previous scenes.
Harold Rutland