Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - The Walk to the Paradise Garden, from “A Village Romeo and Juliet”
Delius’s Dad actively supported music – he helped to organise the Hallé Bradford Subscription Concerts, where I (much later!) cut my musical milk-teeth. However, he did not support a musical career for his talented son. “Fred” tried, but couldn’t hack it in the woollen business. Eventually, he persuaded his father to let him manage an orange plantation in Florida. “Manage” was a euphemism for “look after the music studies and let the oranges look after themselves”. From there he wormed his way towards his goal, becoming one of the most quintessentially English composers ever to be born of German parents.
We need to get one thing absolutely clear: the “Paradise Garden”, far from being some soft-focus horticultural heaven, is in fact a pub - and a rather dilapidated one, at that. In the opera, this enchanting intermezzo covers the scene change to the said hostelry, where the fleeing lovers decide to do away with themselves. The dominant theme, zipping aloft then faltering, reflects their quandary: shall we flee, or put ourselves beyond capture? Alternating languor and ardour, Delius drenches his score in perfumed harmonies and sultry textures, evoking a humidity such as was never endured, not even by Debussy’s Faun.
Note originally commissioned
by the Vancouver Symphony for a concert given on 20 May 2005
.
© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street,
Kamo,
Whangarei 0101,
Northland,
New Zealand
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