Delius: Piano Music
Charles Abramovic, piano; Davyd Booth, violin
Direct-to-Tape DTR2001. Recorded January 2000, Longwood Gardens Music Room, Kennett Square, PA. CD, 62:10.
Delius at the piano. The phrase itself feels slightly wrong—like encountering Sibelius in a cocktail bar, or Elgar cheerfully whistling a tune. The man was an orchestral visionary. His textures breathed, shimmered, dissolved into one another in ways that no keyboard instrument can fully replicate. And yet here we are, sixty-two minutes of Delius distilled—or rather compressed—into eighty-eight keys, and the result is considerably more interesting than skepticism might predict.
Charles Abramovic is the right guide for this territory. Unemphatic, subtle, never forcing the music toward drama it wasn’t built to carry—he has the good sense to let the impressionistic wash simply wash. The “Mazurka” from the Five Piano Pieces is a fair example: Delius nodding toward Debussy, not quite reaching him, but finding his own quiet corner of that harmonic world. The comparison to the French master is unavoidable and, honestly, a little unfair to both composers. Delius’s harmonic language is his own—those hovering added sixths, the reluctance to cadence cleanly—even if the atmosphere sometimes feels borrowed.
The Five Piano Pieces end with a small “Toccata” that surprises. Bright, almost eager—something in its energy recalled for me the more ecstatic pages of the North Country Sketches, which is not where you’d expect to end up in a miniature keyboard piece.
“Zum Carnival” is another matter. This is Delius from his Florida plantation years, the 1890s, and it smells less of orange groves than of a Viennese dance hall—which is curious, given the geography. Pleasant enough. “Pensées Mélodieuses” is florid salon music, no more and no less. “Valse” (1890), “Reverie,” “Badinage“—all hover near the same pleasant elevation, though “Reverie” has some genuinely spicy harmonic twists that justify a second hearing. The “Presto Leggiero” owes an audible debt to the lighter Tchaikovsky—the Seasons, say—and Abramovic dispatches it with becoming lightness.
The most substantial music here, by some distance, comes from Margot la Rouge. This was Delius’s fifth opera—the first four had their vocal scores arranged by Florent Schmitt, which is itself a fascinating footnote—and the two excerpts arranged by Ravel carry real weight. Reticent, suffused with a sadness that feels earned rather than merely atmospheric. Ravel’s arrangement is characteristically elegant; he knew what to preserve and what to leave out. This music stands tall in the present company.
Then there are the transcriptions of the beloved orchestral pieces, and here results are mixed. Gerard Bunk’s arrangement of “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring“—and I confess I cannot place Bunk with any confidence, which bothers me—is remarkably well balanced. Hearing that gentle, inevitable melody in piano dress is momentarily disorienting, the way a familiar face looks strange in an unexpected setting. But it works. Warlock’s transcription of In a Summer Garden is another story. He idolized Delius, which perhaps explains the reverence—and also the failure. The orchestral original is all gossamer and evanescence; the piano version comes across as four-square, the harmonic undergrowth suddenly visible and heavy where it should remain half-hidden. Turning that particular orchestral skein into a percussive instrument is a near-impossible task, and Warlock, for all his gifts, wasn’t equal to it here.
The Florida Suite selections, transcribed by Robert Threlfall—Delius scholar and author of the liner notes—fare better. This is early Delius, before the style fully crystallized, and the music adapts more readily. “Plantation Dance” builds to a genuinely splendid climax under Abramovic’s hands. The “Nocturne” that closes the disc is Grieg-tinged evening music—warm, unhurried, the sound of couples drifting through softly lit streets somewhere in the American South. Or perhaps that’s just what I hear in it.
Davyd Booth joins Abramovic in the “Lullaby for a Modern Baby“—his tone slightly reedy, which suits the piece’s modest ambitions—and the collaboration is untroubled if not revelatory.
Bob Sellman’s recorded sound is clean and natural; the Longwood Gardens Music Room proves an agreeable acoustic, and the Steinway has been captured with genuine warmth. This is a Delius Society of Philadelphia production, and it bears all the marks of devoted care.
Essential? Only for the committed Delian, the transcription enthusiast, or anyone curious what Ravel made of that strange verismo opera. But for those audiences—and they exist, I promise—there is real pleasure here, and Abramovic earns his place in this repertoire. The gem is Bunk’s “Cuckoo.” It should be better known.
