Mary Ward House, 8 November 1989
Reviewed in Delius Society Journal 104, pp6-7
(no music examples)
Part 1: 74′ 40″
Listen to Felix Aprahamian reading from his diaries – Part 1
In August 1933 the 19-year-old London ‘office boy in Mincing Lane’ (as Felix Aprahamian described himself) visited Delius at Grez. He was accompanied by two friends, Donald Peart and Ernest Chapman, who were Delius fanatics, and they were aided by a letter of introduction from Ralph Hawkes of Boosey & Hawkes. They arranged to go first to St Sulpice in Paris where they met the 89-year-old Charles-Marie Widor playing in the organ loft. Two days later they travelled by train from Paris to Fontainebleau and then to Bourron-Marlotte-Grez. After a 2½ kilometre walk to Grez the three had lunch at the Hotel Charlotte – and ‘what a lunch!’ wrote Felix, ever the gourmet and epicure:
‘Perfect hors d’oeuvres … followed by a scrumptious omelette – that by mutton cutlets with lettuce salad with fennel, some excellent local cheese & a delicious peach, all helped down by a palatable red wine and coffee.’
They then went on to the Delius household. Delius offered them wine, first correcting Jelka with ‘But my dear, surely the gentlemen are not going to eat plums before wine,’ and, as Felix was to recall on a number of occasions, the clear instructions of ‘Get the green glasses out, dear’ when Jelka was taking down some white glasses from the shelves for the wine they were about to enjoy.
Felix’s diaries have since been transcribed in Felix Aprahamian: Diaries and Selected Writings on Music by Lewis and Susan Foreman (Boydell Press, 2015), but this recording is all the more valuable because of the many details that Felix added when reading the diaries aloud some 56 years later. He also read about Delius’s burial at Limpsfield in May 1935, and Jelka’s burial also at Limpsfield four days later. His entries here are especially invaluable because he noted down all the people he observed at these services. Most interestingly he commented that Eric Fenby had always claimed that he had been too distraught to attend Jelka’s funeral, yet Felix had clearly noted his presence in the diary.
Jelka explained to Felix that the painting Nevermore was not Gauguin’s original, and twenty years later he was amazed to encounter Jelka’s copy when visiting the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne.
The three visitors promised to ‘broadcast a special bravo at the first performance of the Idyll’ two months later at the Proms.
The diary extracts in Part 1 can be sectioned as follows, with reference to Lewis Foreman’s publication of Felix’s diaries :
| Felix Aprahamian’s decision to visit Delius | 11’23” |
| Charles-Marie Widor at St Sulpice (6th August 1933, Foreman pp91-2) | 15’10” |
| Visit to Delius at Grez (8th August 1933, Foreman pp95-101) | 20’15” |
| Delius’s burial at Limpsfield (26th May 1935, Foreman pp193-4) | 51’53” |
| Jelka’s burial (30th May 1935, Foreman pp.196-8) | 60’62” |
Part 2: 9′ 44″
Listen to Felix Aprahamian reading from his diaries – Part 2
Visit to Alexandre Barjansky (16th June 1935, Foreman pp200-1)
This is an account of a visit that Felix made to see the cellist Alexandre Barjansky at Cumberland House in London in June 1935. Before the critic Norman Cameron (pseudonym of the critic Norah-Delia Barnaby (1899-2001) – see obituary in Delius Society Journal 130, pp72-74) and Ernest Chapman arrived a quarter of an hour or so later, Felix’s discussion with Barjansky chiefly concerned two topics: Ernest Bloch (in particular his new cello work Voice in the Wilderness) and Delius. Barjansky had first played Delius’s Cello Concerto in Vienna in February 1923, repeating it at Frankfurt in March for a Delius 60th birthday concert when he first came into contact with the composer. [Delius’s birth year was then incorrectly thought to be 1863.]
Barjansky spent some time at Grez in 1925 and he recalled the moment when Delius partially regained his sight. One day at Grez when the garden was at its loveliest Jelka had said, ‘Oh that for just once again Frederick could see all this beauty.’ Early one morning she came over to the Barjansky pension in a state of great excitement. ‘Il a vue!’ She told him how it had come about. Punctually at four every day Delius took tea. The previous day Jelka had served him with the tea and was in the room with him when she saw his eyes roving about the room in a strange manner – she realised that something had taken place and dared not whisper a word for fear of disturbing him. He then told her that he could see contours. He was able to see her. Then, after a while, the light passed. After that for several days after tea the phenomenon would occur, but about a fortnight later it ceased and from that day onward Delius was utterly blind.
Barjansky related how Delius had been moved to tell him, one day when Grez was at its most beautiful, that he felt he had more to give to the world but there was no way of putting the music over. Jelka and Barjansky spent many hours pondering as to how the music could be dictated. They considered all of Delius’s friends who might be capable of the task, and they concluded that if such a miracle could happen it could only take effect through the medium of one who knew and loved Delius’s music. The idea of finding such a person had been given up as impossible when, suddenly, there came from Delius’s own Yorkshire a letter from a youth. One morning Fenby presented himself at Grez. Barjansky remembered his arrival. It appears that he was instrumental in cementing a friendship between Fenby and Delius. Soon after his arrival Fenby implored Barjansky to do something to bring him into closer contact with Delius. Barjansky suggested that they should practise together and play to Delius. One entire morning and afternoon they devoted to the Cello Sonata and the Concerto. In the evening they played to Delius. It must have been a wonderful experience. Barjansky said that Delius was overjoyed – Fenby played the piano parts in such a sensitive and intimate manner that composer and would-be amanuensis were drawn instantly together.
It seems appropriate to conclude with a private performance of A Song before Sunrise that Felix gave with Malcolm Rudland at a joint Delius Society and Warlock Society evening in March 1989.
Delius, arr for piano duet by Philip Heseltine: A Song before Sunrise
Felix Aprahamian and Malcolm Rudland
Delius and Warlock Societies joint meeting
British Music Information Centre 22nd March 1989