Early One Morning: Parry Delius Elgar

During the 1960s, Louis Halsey, together with the Elizabethan Singers and The Louis Halsey Singers, made a number of recordings of British choral music for Decca. Three LPs devoted to the music of Parry, Elgar, Stanford and Delius and of folk song settings by a range of British composers, are here collected on this 2CD set. All of this material released on CD for the first time. Though his magnificent choral piece, 'Jerusalem', eclipses much of his other work, Hubert Parry's beautiful 'Songs of Farewell', written during the last three years of his life must be counted among the masterpieces of English choral music. Diana McVeagh describes the Elgar choral songs as 'elaborate, expansive and gorgeous as sheer sound' and so they are in these wonderful performances. All but one of Delius's partsongs were recorded for the original LP and the disc of folk songs arranged by Tippett, Williamson, Grainger, Vaughan Williams, Holst and other front-rank British composers is charming and amusing. Original LP notes (including a very persuasive one by Louis Halsey himself) are reprinted in the booklet.