For many listeners the name Frederick Delius conjures, in musical terms, the transitional seasons and gentle nostalgia – pieces like ‘On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring’, ‘Brigg Fair’ and ‘La Calinda’. Less familiar is the blazing affirmation that arrives in Part Two of Delius’s Nietzsche-inspired choral masterpiece ‘A Mass of Life’ -‘ ‘Herauf! nu herauf ….’, ‘Up now, up you great noon!’, music to be performed ‘with vigour and a sense of elevation’. Unpack CD 2 on Sir Mark Elder’s Bergen Philharmonic recording of ‘A Mass of Life’ (Lawo LWC1265), bask in the nocturnal introduction, then leap to your feet as the music soars skywards, Nietzsche’s poetical-philosophical epic Also sprach Zarathustra providing Delius’s prompting inspiration. Other Zarathustra-inspired works are of course highly significant (Strauss and Mahler being obvious candidates) but Delius’s brave escape into a new zone of experience (a cross between the passion of ‘A Village Romeo & Juliet’ and the sense of yearning that fills ‘A Song of the High Hills’) is perhaps the greatest of them all. Roderick Williams is the persuasive baritone soloist and the sound is excellent. A real treat for any lover of large-scale late Romantic masterpieces.

Writing in Gramophone some while ago I prepared a ‘Gramophone Collection’ feature on Debussy’s symphonic sketches La Mer. Sir Mark Elder’s sumptuous and judiciously paced Hallé Orchestra recording came out on top. It remains a firm recommendation but a new contender by the orchestra Appassionato (Appassionato le label APP001) is equally imposing, the low brass and percussion especially impressive at the close of “From dawn to noon on the sea”. Mathieu Herzog directs a performance that is both subtle and impactful and this imaginative water-based programme also includes Dukas’s perennially entertaining Sorcerer’s Apprentice – where the untrained apprentice floods the workshop until his master returns – and the exceptionally vivid and all-but-unknown Journal De Bord by the French composer and seafaring naval commander Jean Cras, who served with distinction in the Adriatic Campaign during World War I. A wonderful listen.

It’s not too far from the sea to a rugged coastline filled with pirates, a scene that opens Part 2 of Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé, a high point of John Wilson’s Chandos recording of the whole ballet with the Sinfonia of London Chorus and the Sinfonia of London (Chandos CHSA 5327). As always with Wilson, clarity is married to a keen sense of atmosphere, the result – just about the best Daphnis we’ve had since Pierre Monteux’s classic Decca account with the LSO. No-one who loves this miraculous score is likely to be disappointed, especially as the sound is so spectacularly good.