Anthony Collins

• Sullivan Overture di ballo [Listen]
• Gardiner Shepherd Fennell Dance [Listen]
• Grainger Shepherd's Hey [Listen]
• Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis [Listen]
• Vaughan Williams Fantasia on "Greensleeves" [Listen]
• Delius A walk to the Paradise Garden [Listen]
• Delius A Song of Summer [Listen]

John France at Music Web International writes of 1PD26 Collins conducts British Music;

Firstly, the programme of this CD is a near perfect introduction to the pleasures of British music - counting Grainger as an honorary countryman - and secondly, the performance of some of these works is eye-opening to say the least.

The Overture di ballo, which was written for the 1870 Birmingham Festival, is almost a conspectus of Sullivan's style that was to come finally to fruition the following year when the first of the Savoy Operas, Thespis, was heard in London. The Overture simply sparkles - it is a true gem, and Collins gives one of the best performances of this piece that I have heard. Great stuff!

Shepherd's Hey is a short, but quite amazing, miniature - especially in Collins' rendering. It was based on the folk tune 'The Keel Row' and incidentally, the score was dedicated to Edvard Grieg. It is certainly a piece to 'chase away care'.

I listened to Collins' version of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis twice for this review. There is definitely something magical and moving here that I have not quite heard before in this work. And this is even allowing for the half-century plus years that have passed since it was first recorded. Perhaps it is this version that best explains to me what so impressed the young Herbert Howells all those years ago at the Three Choirs Festival. It is like a paean of praise for, and a meditation on, the soil of the West Country and it sons.

For me, the Delius pieces are old friends. I recall an old LP from the 1950s that I found somewhere - probably the school music library. It was Collins version of The Walk to Paradise Garden and The Song of Summer with which I first discovered Delius. And I guess that it is this sound-scape that I have carried with me in my musical mind ever since: it is my touchstone for all subsequent recordings that I have heard of these pieces. In fact it was not until a wee while after hearing these recordings that I discovered the wonderful Tommy Beecham records. Yet even these did not usurp what I had heard of Collins and the LSO. The Song of Summer is one of the pieces that Delius's amanuensis, Eric Fenby, helped set down on manuscript paper. And it is surely a well-known tale that the elder composer asked the young Fenby to imagine the view from the sea-cliffs of Yorkshire on a hot summer's day. To my ear this is one of the best 'landscape' tone-poems in the literature and certainly deserves its place in many an anthology of English music. Collins version is totally convincing, in both its intimate moments and the huge, almost overpowering climaxes.

This is a fine CD that would make a good introduction to English music for anyone who had yet to make that step. The sound is not perfect - but yet again I am just a little younger than these recordings and neither am I! However, what makes it a fantastic disc is the sheer beauty of the sound, the attention to detail and the depth of engendered emotion - especially in the Delius.

Robert Cowen writes in Gramophone for December 2008:

Beulah's star release has Anthony Collins conduct a programme of "British" music. Rarely have I encountered a more sensitively nuanced reading of Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia, with some beautifully judged perspectives, or more luminously played Delius (the "Walk" from Romeo and Juliet and A Song of Summer). All are with the LSO where as the Sullivan's Overture di Ballo (a superb perfomance), Gardiner's Shepherd's Fennell's Dance and Grainger's Shepherd's Hey are with the New Symphony Orchestra. Beulah adds Vaughan Williams' Greensleveves Fantasia, another memorable LSO recording. The transfers are first rate.

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