This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus conducted by Sir Andrew Davies perform two rarely heard works by Frederick Delius. Appalachia has a somber mood reflecting the fate that overcame many of the black slaves along the Mississippi River. The inspiration for the work came to Delius while he was working on an orange plantation in Florida as a young man. It culminates in the setting of an anonymous slave song which he heard in Florida. In the work, the song is first sung by unaccompanied chorus.
The inspiration for The Song of the High Hills was the mountains of Norway, a country that Delius regarded as his spiritual home. In 1911 he began composing this tone poem, in which he sought to capture the impression created by a still summer night in the Norwegian mountains. Written for large orchestra and chorus, it was completed the following year. The chorus plays an integral part in the work, as it does in Appalachia, although the singing here is entirely wordless.
