Caprice and Elegy
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Orchestra
- Composed
- 1930
- Duration
- 8'20''
- Publisher
- Boosey & Hawkes
Purchase or download
About this piece
Delius composed these two short pieces in 1930 for the cellist Beatrice Harrison, a longtime champion of his music. By then he was blind and paralysed, and both pieces, built on earlier unfinished sketches, were completed by dictation to his amanuensis Eric Fenby, who wrote out the scores and also made the cello and piano arrangement. Harrison played the work on her 1930 tour of the United States and gave it with piano at Wigmore Hall in London on 23 April 1931. Hawkes & Son published the full score and the cello and piano parts in 1931, and Harrison recorded the pieces for His Master's Voice with Fenby conducting. Later recordings include Julian Lloyd Webber with Fenby and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1981) and Lloyd Webber with Neville Marriner. Boosey & Hawkes sells Fenby's cello and piano version separately and in the Collected Edition volume 31c, Works for Cello & Piano.
Technical overview
Two short movements, Caprice and Elegy, lasting about eight minutes together; the Elegy can be played on its own. Both demand a singing tone and phrasing across a lyrical, chromatic late-Delius texture.