Delius had a special relationship with the collective human voice, and the songs here are also presented chronologically, which allows us to follow pleasurably the development of his style. I did wonder whether it was a good idea to include the extracts from A Village Romeo and Juliet and Appalachia. Admittedly they prolong what would, overall, have been a rather brief encounter, and their accompaniments also provide contrast of timbre (the latter work, with its piano accompaniment, sounding very Grainger-like); but they do need to be heard in context to ‘take off’. The ‘essential’ Delius comes with On Craig Dhu – experience of nature not so much tinged by melancholy as perceived through it; a haunting evocation in grey; “how on earth do you manage such things?” wrote Bantock – and the setting of Tennyson’s The splendour falls on castle walls, as characteristically Delius as Britten’s setting of it, in his Serenade, is Britten.
Though the singing itself deserves a generally warm welcome, it is quite easy to find faults with it. Not all Delius’s chromatic wanderings are as confidently charted as they might be. The sopranos seem the strongest contingent, and the ones most often in the expressive spotlight (maybe they also excite more resonance, and with it prominence, from the generously reverberant location). Nor are the soloists ideal, the tenor sounding unhappy in the higher regions of the second of the two songs, To be sung of a summer night on the water. And on occasions, as in the first of those two songs, one might have wished for more varied pacing and dynamic shading from the conductor. But the world of Delius performance is one where devotees are used to taking the roundabouts with the swings, and although the Delian highlights here are available in alternative recordings, this is the only all-Delius collection of its kind on the market.'