Fennimore and Gerda is Delius’s last opera, and his most problematical: “three rather dreary people who have nothing to sing” was Beecham’s judgement (four, of course, if you count Gerda, who appears only briefly, in a happy ending awkwardly quarried from what in the original book was a grimly tragic, pessimistic conclusion). And indeed it is hard to like or care much about any of them: Fennimore, who marries Erik but loves Niels – and then angrily rejects him when her husband dies; Erik, weakly subsiding into drunkenness because life seems pointless; Niels, who ineffectively loves both of them but eventually finds unbelievable happiness with the schoolgirl Gerda.
The dismal libretto, however (rendered still worse, according to Beecham, by Philip Heseltine’s English translation – Delius wrote and set it in German), accompanies some of Delius’s strongest as well as some of his most sensuous music, and it articulates an attempt to rethink opera to suit his by now mature gifts. It is an orchestral opera, in short (the vocal lines are neither especially characterful nor especially grateful), its 11 scenes and four interludes carefully balanced in colour, pace and duration. One might even say that the intervals form part of the design: although the opera is very short, Delius envisaged it being divided into three acts.
The work’s beauties are more obvious and its weaknesses more tolerable when it is as strongly sung and played as it is here. Soderstrom, in fine voice, does all that can be done for Fennimore, and gives even Gerda a touch of character. Tear makes Erik a believably Ibsenish Erik, and Rayner Cook is a poetic, sensitive Niels. We even have a fleeting appearance by Anthony Rolfe Johnson as the Voice across the water. Davies’s direction was criticized when this recording was new for not measuring up to Beecham’s subtlety. Pish tush; he paces finely and draws wonderful colours from an orchestra who sound as though they are enjoying themselves greatly. The recording is exemplary.'