Delius: The song of the High Hills - Radio Filharmonisch Orkest & Sir Mark Elder - Live concert HD

[@bertramgoatcabin7376]

Heavenly music. More Delius!!!!

[@johnpetley-jones9563]

Thanks for this gem. A wonderful companion to Elder's incandescent Mass of Life from Bergen.

[@Listenerandlearner870]

This is fabulous. Elder is an exceptionally fine Delius conductor. Tempi, changes of tempi, structure.

[@petermartin2054]

I enjoy getting lost in the irresolution and the sense of feeling untethered from any key center. I'm sure it comes from an altered state but the willingness and perseverance that comes from certain discipline to get it notated is remarkable for any composer. How one finds oneself inside this labyrinth and comes out the other end whole is a wonder. That's Delius. Randomness and chaos merge into exquisite musical prose. Lovely this. Thank you orchestra for recording this most fascinating piece. Thank you for posting it for us mortals to experience.

[@LucienMarine]

A Song of the High Hills is a work for tenor, soprano, chorus and orchestra by Frederick Delius. This composition is one of Delius’s greatest works, a symphony wherein the choir is used as a second, distant ensemble. Throughout his career, Delius maintained a strong attachment to the mountain ranges of Norway due to his friendship with Edvard Grieg. A transitional work, in which Delius moved away from the human sensibilities depicted in works such as Sea Drift reaching a magical sequence of sounds and echoes both vocal and instrumental, all culminating in a great explosion of timbre that seems to flood the entire landscape. She presents hitherto unknown elements of austerity and impersonality, as if Delius had tired of interpreting the joys and sorrows of human beings and had turned to the sole contemplation of Nature. The Song of the High Hills has the most individual form of any textless work by Frederick Delius. It is ternary in outline, with an expansive interlude in the first section that foreshadows the intense contemplation of the central portion of the work. There is a strongly marked point of recapitulation and more obvious repetition of material. Two principal elements constitute the structure: opening and closing sections of forceful, striving material, and a central sequence of serene episodes based on a lovely, Grieg-like melody. The chorus in this work sings no words, pure vocalization is employed as a means of poetic evocation. Sometimes, a solo tenor voice seems to detach itself from the tonal fabric as a whole, but elusive it disappears once more into the disembodied sound from whence it came. Then, solo soprano and tenor sing the ascending phrase from the tenor’s earlier entry as counterpoint to the main theme. The chorus proceeds unaccompanied during a laspe of time before the orchestra joins them, leading to a tremendous crescendo and climax before the final conclusion. The work is the consummate expression of Delius’s contemplative spirit and attachment to nature. *Lucien*

[@kodebruijn4753]

I thought it was just music.

[@LucienMarine]

@@kodebruijn4753 Sometimes music hides things from us in order to intrigue us. 🙂

[@steveegallo3384]

@@kodebruijn4753 -- Ridiculous! Where would you get such a notion? BRAVI from Mexico City!

[@markparry6076]

Delius said of this. work". I wanted to express the joy and exhilaration one feels in the Mountains and also the loneliness and melancholy of the higher solitudes and the grandeur of the wide far distances the choir represents Man in nature an episode which becomes fainter and then disappears altogether "He also said of the work " One of my works in which I have expressed myself most completely in fact one of my finest "⁷

[@michaelthoseby4682]

There needs to be more Delius on KZbin - How about Sea Drift for starters?

[@Twentythousandlps]

KZbin has multiple versions of Sea Drift.

[@bonniebrauer7486]

Delius was dying when he wrote this; thus ~ Angst...