Norman del Mar - favourite recordings

[Barbirollians]

I find that apart from the Serenade for Strings extracted from an apparently highly regarded English Music LP from the late 1960s I have no recordings by this conductor .

I note on another thread many reminiscences regarding to his performances in the 1960s and 1970s . I only saw him conduct once when as a teenager I went to a Victor Hochhauser Beethoven concert of all things with I think the RPO . Menuhin , in variable but poetic form was the soloist in the violin concerto and then del mar conducted a far from routine Beethoven 5 with the transition to the finale as I remember it particularly well handled .

[Caliban]

I find that apart from the Serenade for Strings extracted from an apparently highly regarded English Music LP from the late 1960s I have no recordings by this conductor .

I note on another thread many reminiscences regarding to his performances in the 1960s and 1970s . I only saw him conduct once when as a teenager I went to a Victor Hochhauser Beethoven concert of all things with I think the RPO . Menuhin , in variable but poetic form was the soloist in the violin concerto and then del mar conducted a far from routine Beethoven 5 with the transition to the finale as I remember it particularly well handled .

Again by reference to another thread: the Elgar "Pomp & Circumstance" marches with the RPO plus the "Enigma Variations"

I also have his English music collection: http://www.amazon.com/Somerset-Rhaps.../dp/B000CERDYK although heaven knows when I last played it, so hardly a "favourite"....

[gradus]

Wasn't he Beecham's assistant early on, as well as being a very good conductor in his own right, something of a musical scholar too, the author of a well regarded study of the music of Richard Strauss.
The Bournemouth Sinfonietta recording of Elgar string pieces conducted by him is I think my only lp of his performances and very good it is.
Didn't he also conduct The Last Night of the Proms?
An all round first class musician.

[Barbirollians]

He was certainly an eminent authority on Strauss and his books on his works are still available according to Amazon .

[robk]

I have his excellent recording of Noye's Fludde with Owen Brannigan as Noye recorded in 1961 at Orford Church.

[Biffo]

My first encounter with Norman Del Mar was an LP (which I still have) in the 'music today' series from EMI. The disc contains Schoenberg's Suite for String Orchestra, Lutyens' cantata 'O saisons, O chateau' and Britten's Prelude and Fugue for 18-part String Orchestra - an indication of the breadth of his interests.

[umslopogaas]

Norman del Mar was the conductor of The Hoffnung (alias Morley College) Symphony Orchestra on the Hoffnung Interplanetary Music Festival 1958. This includes the hilarious Let's Fake An Opera, which has a pretty stellar cast: Edith Coates, Owen Brannigan, Otakar Kraus, Peter Glossop and Ian Wallace, among others, and the jokes come on so thick and fast I usually get a pain in my ribs from the laughter. Here's the plot synopsis.

"The scene is the outside of a cigarette factory in old Nuremberg. Beckmesser woos Azucena, the sex-kitten of the tobacco girls. Otello rides in with his swan, which is chased away by William Tell, Max and other huntsmen. Otello, retiring defeated from the hunt, meets Salome who, on the removal of all her veils, proves to be Fidelio, and sings herself into a stupor. Brunnhilde in search of a husband, is disappointed - Fidelio is a woman in disguise - and even the rival serenaders of whom she has hopes turn out to be serenading Melisande. However, she gets her man (Radames) in the end: Fidelio awakes and departs on Brunnhilde's tricycle, Grane: leaving the frustrated Nightwatchman to steal forty well-deserved winks in the vacated bed, etc, etc."

[makropulos]

I have his excellent recording of Noye's Fludde with Owen Brannigan as Noye recorded in 1961 at Orford Church.

That's my favourite Del Mar recording, along with the superb performance of Delius's Mass of Life that was issued (unofficially) on Intaglio.

[Thomas Roth]

Bax 6 and Noye´s Fludde.