Classic CD: Delius in Norway

Delius in Norway.

Delius in Norway (Chandos)

Stars: 5/5
Verdict: A cross-cultural journey illuminates one of the under-estimated voices of English music.

Delius in Norway reveals the influence of Scandinavia on the music of Frederick Delius (1862-1934), one of the most cosmopolitan of English composers.

It all started in 1882 with a business trip to Norway organised by his father, with the young man finding something "profound, mystical and indelible" in the country.

An intense admiration for Grieg would extend to Nordic writers and, in time, there would be friendships with Ibsen, Strindberg, Bjornson and others.

All this is celebrated in eight works, magnificently played by the Bergen Philharmonic under Sir Andrew Davis, with young Norwegian soprano Ann-Helen Moen singing two settings of Bjornson poems.

These songs may be the perfect starting point: a lovelorn princess pines in a tower in one, forest birds remember the laughter of secret lovers in the other.

The luscious orchestration makes more than a few nods to Tristan; Moen seems almost to confide the songs, such is her naturalness.

Sir Andrew Davis was interviewed in the BBC documentary Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma, which recently screened on the Arts Channel. A long sequence in which he enthuses over A Song of the High Hills was one of the film's most moving moments.

The same passion is revealed in this new CD when he invests the well-known On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring with a truly vernal lilt.

Davis made his first Delius recording decades ago and his 2011 coupling of Appalachia and A Song of the High Hills revealed a deep sympathy between the conductor and this composer's music.

In 2014, he and his Bergen musicians make the sprawling Eventyr (1917) spring to life, its spiky xylophone and primitive choral shouting reminding one that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was just a few years old.

Best of all, Delius in Norway takes us along the musical pathway that led to his eventual maturity as a composer.

It sets off with a frisky arrangement of Grieg's Norwegian Bridal Procession, while the grand Teutonic splendour of On the Mountains, an 1891 symphonic poem inspired by an Ibsen poem, may seem a little like minor league Richard Strauss.