Paul Spicer - Delius and Ireland Partsongs (2014)

Eric Fenby, Delius’s amanuensis, thought that some of his best work lay in vocal and choral music. He had a highly developed and extremely subtle feeling for sounds at work – Delius himself used to say, ‘I am always at my best when there are words’ and that he probed to the heart of whatever poem he was setting is beyond the shadow of a doubt. Many of his major works, dating from the first decade of the 20th century, are partially or fully choral, but a chain of minor works for unaccompanied voices threads through most of his working career, from early songs written in 1887 whilst studying at the Leipzig Conservatoire to one of the last pieces, completed with his wife’s assistance as paralysis struck him during the mid-1920s. The present collection offers all his completed works in this medium.