ABSTRACT
Although EMI had been recording on tape since October 1948 it was another four years before they began to issue their own long-playing records; even then the old process of recording in 78rpm segments continued up as late as 1954, and some extended works were still being issued in both formats up to that time. Three major Beecham-Delius projects – North Country Sketches, recorded in 1949, Eventyr in January and April 1951, and the Dance Rhapsody No. 1 in October 1952 – were affected: while all three were issued as 78s none of them achieved release in microgroove format in the UK until many years later. American collectors were luckier: Eventyr was quickly paired with North Country Sketches on an American Columbia LP, while the Dance Rhapsody was included in a Delius compilation issued by RCA along with other miniatures which had also achieved issue in the UK only as 78s (the First Cuckoo, Summer Night on the River, Summer Evening, and the Intermezzo and Serenade from Hassan). Especially irritating from the English point of view was that the RCA disc also offered an item completely new to the Delius-Beecham discography in the shape of the song Twilight Fancies, sung by Elsie Suddaby to Beecham’s orchestration and recorded in London in April 1951. The Dance Rhapsody and some but not all the miniatures made their eventual debut on LP in 1962 to mark the centenary of Delius’s birth; Suddaby’s song, however, was denied to the UK until Beecham’s centenary celebrations in 1979.
