Small orchestras must be glad that Delius provided them with a number of suitable pieces within their range, thus making a grateful change from the early music which must otherwise be their staple diet. Even so, the number of those pieces—often very lovely—is limited and on record we therefore tend to get variations of the same selection from such admirable artists as Norman Del Mar and Sir Neville Marriner, not to mention a number of others. Richard Hickox has already proved himself a fine interpreter of Delius's larger pieces with two of the composer's masterpieces—his coupling of Sea Drift and Appalachia (Argo ZRG934, 7/81)—and his handling of these shorter pieces is no less accomplished, so that it is difficult to find anything new to suggest which is to be preferred among the several similar Delius records available.
There is a limit to the range of emotion to be expressed in even the most beautiful of these short pieces and Hickox certainly plays them as sympathetically as his rivals do. Perhaps I may pick out the smoothness of the lines, the way he avoids any emphasis on the trochaic metre Delius is so fond of. The opening tune of On Hearing the First Cuckoo, for example, never has any undue weight on the crotchet which emphasizes the habit (as also in the Serenade from Hassan). Smoothness and along lines are, in fact, a feature of these performances.'