Roy Henderson (baritone)
The Halle Chorus
The Halle Orchestra
Leader, Laurance Turner
Conducted, by Malcolm Sargent
Part I
(Soloist, Roy Henderson )
From a North-West concert hall
' Delius's 'Sea Drift' is based on the greater part of Out of the cradle endlessly rocking', the first of the eleven poems comprising Whitman's ' Sea Drift'. The poem tells a tragic little story of two birds who built their nest in a lonely part of the seashore, and a boy who watched them at mating time, 'every day, cautiously peering, absorbing, translating '. One day the she-bird disappeared and was never seen again. ' And thenceforth all summer in the sound of the sea, and at night under the full of the moon ... I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the solitary guest from Alabama '.
The telling of the story is shared by the lonely boy (baritone) and the chorus, which also personifies the he-bird crying out to the wind and the stars to bring back his mate.