Frederick Delius - North Country Sketches

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH (/ˈdiːlɪəs/ 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. There he soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, it was 1907 before his music made regular appearances in concert programmes, after Thomas Beecham took it up. 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... Movements/Sections 4 pieces Autumn - The Wind Soughs in the Trees Winter Landscape Dance The March of Spring - Woodlands, Meadows and Silent Moors First Publication 1922 – London: Augener WIKIPEDIA

 VIDEO: Delius orchestral piece performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the sublime Sir Thomas Beecham, recorded in February 1951. The video is a series of extracts from 'The Restless Year', a ground-breaking time-lapse photographic film from 1996.