Benjamin Dale's 'The Flowing Tide'

[JeremyMHolmes]

Dear all,

First of all congratulations on a splendid forum which I have only just discovered, and what a treat!

I am posting here a similar plea to one I have just put on the new Chandos Forum, in the hope of eliciting some support from fellow lovers of British music.

It concerns an orchestral piece by Benjamin Dale, probably his major orchestral work, an extensive symphonic poem called 'The Flowing Tide'. More on this piece and Dale's career can be found on the excellent wikipedia article.

This piece was recorded for radio performance by the late and much missed Vernon Handley and the BBC SO, and was broadcast recently as part of R3's tribute to 'Tod' Handley. I heard the piece at that time and think it is a crying shame that such a substantial work is not commercially available, and that this recording is equally out of reach of the general public. Is there not any way that an enterprising company such as Chandos could licence it for release on CD or even download? It could even be part of a tribute CD to Tod?

Looking at the wikipedia article's list of works, there are some shorter works which could possibly also be added to the CD (a couple of overtures etc).

Please do let me know what you think about this one, as I think Tod's performance of this piece has been the only professional one for many years, and who knows when it will be broadcast again.

Many thanks

JMH

[Gareth Vaughan]

Benjamin Dale's "The Flowing Tide" is a masterpiece which shows how the composer might have developed had he lived longer. Tod Handley's performance was wonderful and it should certainly be made available on disk - along with many other BBC recordings of English music which are stuck away in the archives where we can't hear them (e,g. Norman Del Mar's splendid performance of Bantock's "Omar Khayyam" - UNCUT (the recent Chandos disk under Tod Handey, marvellous though it is, is marred by some wholly unnecessary cuts - what were they thinking of?).