When I was still a student in the early 1960s, only Sir Thomas Beecham openly championed the work of Frederick Delius. Delius was generally dismissed then as "too sweet." Well, Sir Thomas was right, and we who blindly followed the crowd, and never bothered to investigate this magnificent repertoire were foolish and short-sighted as many young people tend to be. I'm so happy to have discovered the glorious lyric intensity of this composer at long last. "Better late than never " comes to mind.
I first listened to this work about 25 years ago and fell in love with the beauty of the music. I could not quite understand the lyrics on my recording until after hearing the work 40 or 50 times I decided to read the poem while listening to the song. I wept and did not listen to it again for years because the lyrics are the saddest I've ever heard. But I do love this piece. Thank you for posting. DA (Vancouver, WA)
I've studied a lot on Delius. This was the favorite of his works, his piano concerto his least favorite. Gurre-Lieder and Seadrift are the last of the romantic state of mind, what treasures.
What a masterpiece. Somehow this manages to combine the beuaty and brutality of nature with an examination of grief. This piece should be up there with the very great works by any composer
Martin Smith It was only when I read Walt Whitman's words and heard Bryn Terfel's eloquent, sensitive interpretation that I began to understand this work. Exquisite but heartbreaking - Delius' most tragic but perhaps greatest work.
I think of Delius as being a quintessential ENGLISH composer, despite his German heritage. Perhaps his amanuensis Eric Fenby worked as successfully with him as he did because they were both Yorkshiremen! This music is truly sublime...it's so gratifying to see Delius' beautiful music rediscovered....
Delius was of Prussian ancestry, was reared in England, and spent most of his adult life in suburban Paris, while having little to do with the French and the music of Faure, Debussy and Ravel. My American father revered his music. In the 1940s and 50s, Delius was superficially described as "the British impressionist composer." As a young man, Delius spent a few years near Jacksonville FL, where he discovered African American music. There is something very American in the music of Sea Drift and the Florida Suite.
Delius remains a surprise - how close to infinity-coloured sounds in a symphonic poem can be conceived by a composer of the last decades of "victorian" majestic world . Actually, there is a clear trio sharing the same basic waves - Delius, Vaugham Williams and Holst.A lot to be heard, analyzed, digested, understood. I thank deeply the sharing.
... although, ironically, RVW didn't think highly of Delius's music, feeling that it lacked "backbone" and meandered around pleasantly but rather shapelessly and aimlessly, an opinion I share apart from in miniatures such as 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring' and 'Sea Drift' - possibly his masterpiece.
@@stevepayne5965I agree. But is it not almost traditional a good composer not taking into due high praise other composer of the same era? Look into Bach and Haendel, Sibelius and R. Strauss and so forth. In the end of the day, let´s rejoice ourselves for being witnesses (and consumers) of their inspirational creations... To that extent they were just transitional humans.... .
This is personally my favorite classical piece featuring the ocean. Don't get me wrong, "La Mer" is great, but "Sea Drift" just hits deeper in the heart, imo.
Years ago I played this for my then currents girlfriend who was pop singer and not familiar with classical music. .She sat there, listened and said, " I love this and never want to hear it again. It is too heArtbreaking."
+Harry Haff Agreed! Listenning to Delius one is instantly propelled into an idyllic state. I'm half way between pure nirvana and utter tragedy. The work of a genius!
Thank you, James, for leading me to this after my telling you I had just discovered Delius the other day. Bryn Terfel, it seems, never fails to turn in a magnificent performance. This is certainly no exception to that rule.
Thank you for posting this deeply moving work, with such expressive singing from Bryn Terfel, who uses every tone quality and dynamic of his beautiful voice to express the sensational poetry and music. On first listening, for me, the orchestral playing and choral singing is by contrast rather cool (detached?) in places, with the opportunity missed to bring out some beautiful lines, but as a whole the performance catches the sweep of the music and poetry. Wonderful music, which deserves to be
*Sea Drift* I really feel for the tenth commentator, but it is rare to find such unanimity and such courtesy. May time heal all wounds. Musically it is fascinating, just a touch of Wagner and all that plantations singing from Florida.
*Sea Drift* About 21:00 there is a moment of glorious ambiguity where a Wagnerian seventh melts from utter tragedy to a renewal of the lease of life...
Delius being sugary ''cow patting'' is one of the stranger yet most persistent memes I've heard. Here it's obvious but even in his pastoral works there's almost always some ache underneath it. Also, patting cows OWNS to begin with.
*Bruno Monsaingeon: Une couche d'or* - I think what really lies behind *this* is Wagner's Siegfried Idyll....[listen at 24:00 and then to the end and you will see what I mean...the cloth woven of one piece, without a seam, for which the soldiers diced; and an earlier version of which had been worn by Joseph...] For a really interesting discussion of Glenn Gould's recording of the Wagner piece (by Kevin Doyle, now an international star of the industry) you have to look in an unlikely place: Bruno Monsaigneon's website, in the 'Livre d'Or'.
Delius: German by blood, but not at all my idea of a German composer. English by upbringing and he did influence English composers. But he wouldn't live there. Powerfully influenced by the America he visited as a young man. Lived most of his adult life in France, but would not have anything to do with the French musical scene.
Being a passionate devotee of classical music and especially Delius, I am not an opera lover, and I find the baritone passages in this work strident and abrasive. The work would have been better left entirely to the chorus. One of his final works, Songs of Farewell, is entirely lovely with orchestra and chorus.
![Frederick Delius: The Song of the High Hills [Eric Fenby]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qzvxM_qUtmk/mqdefault.jpg)
When I was still a student in the early 1960s, only Sir Thomas Beecham openly championed the work of Frederick Delius. Delius was generally dismissed then as "too sweet." Well, Sir Thomas was right, and we who blindly followed the crowd, and never bothered to investigate this magnificent repertoire were foolish and short-sighted as many young people tend to be.
I'm so happy to have discovered the glorious lyric intensity of this composer at long last. "Better late than never " comes to mind.
Ich finde diesen impressionistischen Klang einfach magisch.
I first listened to this work about 25 years ago and fell in love with the beauty of the music. I could not quite understand the lyrics on my recording until after hearing the work 40 or 50 times I decided to read the poem while listening to the song. I wept and did not listen to it again for years because the lyrics are the saddest I've ever heard. But I do love this piece. Thank you for posting. DA (Vancouver, WA)
No one has broken my heart so many beautiful times as Delius such bliss!!!!.
Garry Hudson
I've studied a lot on Delius. This was the favorite of his works, his piano concerto his least favorite. Gurre-Lieder and Seadrift are the last of the romantic state of mind, what treasures.
What a masterpiece. Somehow this manages to combine the beuaty and brutality of nature with an examination of grief. This piece should be up there with the very great works by any composer
*Delius - Sea Drift* There has never been anything like this, nor ever will be. It is sheer perfection. If you follow it with the text you see.
Martin Smith It was only when I read Walt Whitman's words and heard Bryn Terfel's eloquent, sensitive interpretation that I began to understand this work. Exquisite but heartbreaking - Delius' most tragic but perhaps greatest work.
Exactly, James. The two together is a rare delight - and I think a Tristan in its own right!
I think of Delius as being a quintessential ENGLISH composer, despite his German heritage. Perhaps his amanuensis Eric Fenby worked as successfully with him as he did because they were both Yorkshiremen! This music is truly sublime...it's so gratifying to see Delius' beautiful music rediscovered....
Delius was of Prussian ancestry, was reared in England, and spent most of his adult life in suburban Paris, while having little to do with the French and the music of Faure, Debussy and Ravel. My American father revered his music. In the 1940s and 50s, Delius was superficially described as "the British impressionist composer." As a young man, Delius spent a few years near Jacksonville FL, where he discovered African American music. There is something very American in the music of Sea Drift and the Florida Suite.
What. a great piece. there is no resisting the beauty of the music of Delius
Lovely artistic marriage of two cultures--Britain's Delius and America's 'bard'--Whitman
... and a german musical heritage!
it's one of the most spiritual things i´ve ever seen
Delius remains a surprise - how close to infinity-coloured sounds in a symphonic poem can be conceived by a composer of the last decades of "victorian" majestic world . Actually, there is a clear trio sharing the same basic waves - Delius, Vaugham Williams and Holst.A lot to be heard, analyzed, digested, understood. I thank deeply the sharing.
... although, ironically, RVW didn't think highly of Delius's music, feeling that it lacked "backbone" and meandered around pleasantly but rather shapelessly and aimlessly, an opinion I share apart from in miniatures such as 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring' and 'Sea Drift' - possibly his masterpiece.
@@stevepayne5965I agree. But is it not almost traditional a good composer not taking into due high praise other composer of the same era? Look into Bach and Haendel, Sibelius and R. Strauss and so forth. In the end of the day, let´s rejoice ourselves for being witnesses (and consumers) of their inspirational creations... To that extent they were just transitional humans.... .
this music is not just "sweet" but reflects the deeply rooted kindness of Delius character
This is personally my favorite classical piece featuring the ocean. Don't get me wrong, "La Mer" is great, but "Sea Drift" just hits deeper in the heart, imo.
Years ago I played this for my then currents girlfriend who was pop singer and not familiar with classical music. .She sat there, listened and said, " I love this and never want to hear it again. It is too heArtbreaking."
+Harry Haff one cannot think of a finer musical comment---Sea Drift IS too beautiful for words--
+Harry Haff Agreed! Listenning to Delius one is instantly propelled into an idyllic state. I'm half way between pure nirvana and utter tragedy. The work of a genius!
Unfortunately
What a load of First World Problems! I would have told her to SHUT HER CUNT-TRAP
I don't think it gets much better than this... bravo, Bryn.
Thank you, James, for leading me to this after my telling you I had just discovered Delius the other day. Bryn Terfel, it seems, never fails to turn in a magnificent performance. This is certainly no exception to that rule.
Reduced me to tears, as the great Romantic composers tend to do. Gorgeous. Thank you.
Thank you for posting this deeply moving work, with such expressive singing from Bryn Terfel, who uses every tone quality and dynamic of his beautiful voice to express the sensational poetry and music. On first listening, for me, the orchestral playing and choral singing is by contrast rather cool (detached?) in places, with the opportunity missed to bring out some beautiful lines, but as a whole the performance catches the sweep of the music and poetry. Wonderful music, which deserves to be
Gorgeous music!
Reminds me of Vaughan Williams' 'Sea Symphony' of course...
Incredible!!
*Sea Drift* I really feel for the tenth commentator, but it is rare to find such unanimity and such courtesy. May time heal all wounds. Musically it is fascinating, just a touch of Wagner and all that plantations singing from Florida.
Very beautiful
Magnificas voces en la inmensa soledad .......
*Sea Drift* About 21:00 there is a moment of glorious ambiguity where a Wagnerian seventh melts from utter tragedy to a renewal of the lease of life...
Thank you!
Delius being sugary ''cow patting'' is one of the stranger yet most persistent memes I've heard. Here it's obvious but even in his pastoral works there's almost always some ache underneath it. Also, patting cows OWNS to begin with.
*Bruno Monsaingeon: Une couche d'or* - I think what really lies behind *this* is Wagner's Siegfried Idyll....[listen at 24:00 and then to the end and you will see what I mean...the cloth woven of one piece, without a seam, for which the soldiers diced; and an earlier version of which had been worn by Joseph...] For a really interesting discussion of Glenn Gould's recording of the Wagner piece (by Kevin Doyle, now an international star of the industry) you have to look in an unlikely place: Bruno Monsaigneon's website, in the 'Livre d'Or'.
Never better, Bryn !
@trumanfalls Sure, the painting is called "The Ninth Wave" and it is by Ivan Aivazovsky.
Für mich eine Offenbarung
grande musica!
One of the last tragic amateurs of Emerson and Whitman in music. Along with Ives.
Delius: German by blood, but not at all my idea of a German composer. English by upbringing and he did influence English composers. But he wouldn't live there. Powerfully influenced by the America he visited as a young man. Lived most of his adult life in France, but would not have anything to do with the French musical scene.
I agreed
Can ANYBODY tell me what the painting above is? The artist?
Yes, it's The Ninth Wave by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky.
Actually I used Google Image Search.
Amazing picture, anyone care to enlighten me as to its painter?
Being a passionate devotee of classical music and especially Delius, I am not an opera lover, and I find the baritone passages in this work strident and abrasive. The work would have been better left entirely to the chorus. One of his final works, Songs of Farewell, is entirely lovely with orchestra and chorus.
7 people drowned in the sea drift
Popfenflügenugen!
最後竟然有馬勒的味道 !?
Too much baritone.
aha
The baritone soloist is the protagonist, the mournful bird, whose longing the whole poem is about.
@@zamyrabyrd this baritone cant refrain, he enjoys himseld too much,he always likes his full voice, he lacks culture...
Not enough cowbell.
Ok
Magnificas voces en la inmensa soledad .......