It was Christopher Palmer who produced ''The Fenby Legacy'' (Unicorn-Kanchana DKP9008/9, 10/81), a recording of works with which Eric Fenby was connected. Then, having discovered Fenby's gifts as pianist and conductor, he went on to give us songs with piano (Unicorn-Kanchana DKP9022, 3/84) and now here is Fenby as a conductor of Delius. Fenby must know more about Delius's music and understand it better than anyone now living, in view of his long and close association with the composer: and he knows how to get what he wants from the orchestra.
The major work is obviously The song of the high hills, a large-scale piece demanding chorus and a huge orchestra, and showing Delius the imaginative visionary at his greatest. Beecham recorded it and it was transferred to LP by World Record Club (SMB54, 10/79—nla) but it was made as long ago as 1946 and the recording, which I have just listened to, simply could not cope with the complexity of sound as a modern one can. So we start with a big advantage. Not only has the texture great clarity but Delius's smallest directions make their effect. The two horns just before fig. 9 have the first echoing the third as the composer asks; and the recording of the place where he writes ''The wide far distance—The great solitude'', wonderfully suggests the loneliness of the spaces of Norway's mountain peaks. The choir really does sing pppp when asked to, yet at climaxes it soars gorgeously. So all this is splendid.
The songs which Delius orchestrated himself (apart from one, by Fenby) gain enormously and each, apart from its qualities as a setting (much less obvious with piano accompaniment) sounds like a small orchestral piece by Delius, so that the voice is supported by the colour that characterizes it immediately, as by its only possible composer. There are settings of Scandinavian, French and British poems and you are likely to be struck by the different way he sets those from each source, yet they are all unistakably Delius.
The soloists are of the first class (all of them used by Palmer in ''The Fenby Legacy''). Sarah Walker is especially glorious in the best-known, Twilight fancies, and even the smaller solos in the chorus in The song of the high hills are well taken by Maryetta and Vernon Midgley.'