2 Stücke für kleines Orchester I. On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring Beim ersten Kuckucksruf im Frühling II. Summer Night on the River Sommernacht am Flusse... Studienpartitur M. 5.00 No. [Full score]

Cöln am Rhein: Verlag Tischer & Jagenberg G.M.B.H. [PN T. & J. 248.], 1914. Folio. Original publisher's wrappers with titling printed in red and brown within decorative borders. [1] (title), 2-14, 1f. (publisher's advertisement with brief catalog to verso) pp.

Contemporary signature in black ink and small music seller's and publisher's handstamps to upper wrapper; handstamps to lower margin of title.

Wrappers slightly worn and soiled. First Edition. CPM 16, p. 157. Threlfall VI/19.

Delius's "best-known orchestral tone poem, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912), epitomizes his sweet nostalgia, while its (truncated) companion-piece, Summer Night on the River (1911), with its softly clashing lines, is one of his few Impressionist pieces." These famous pieces were first performed at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on October 23, 1913, conducted by Artur Nikisch.

"Though he spent the greater part of his life abroad, settling in France and enjoying his first professional successes in Germany and Norway, Delius is considered among the most significant and characteristic of English compositional voices. The seamless flow of Wagner, together with the airier chromaticism of Grieg and the rich colouring of Strauss matured into a recognizably individual idiom, in which melody of beguiling fluidity is complemented by a harmonic syntax often daring in its range and flexibility of rhythmic pacing. Though he contributed to the genres of opera, concerto and sonata, it is the nostalgic rhapsody of his orchestral tone poems, with their sensuous evocations of natural beauty, and the ecstatic though resolutely secular spirituality of his choral works that have proved especially enduring." Robert Anderson, et al. in Grove Music Online. (Inventory #: 26712)