Heard this on BBC Radio 3 this morning - had no idea what it was! If you don't know it, do get hold of it somehow. 12 and a half minutes of pure post-Straussian indulgence...
I assume you mean the orchestral version. The recording I have is in Chados's Grainger edition, oddly enough on one of the choral discs despite half or more of it being non-choral).
Still, this piece is probably one of his most late-Romantic style works, as most of them are of course either 'dished-up' folksongs (or folk song style) or just in general a bit off the cusp.....not that I don't love it all myself, just hard to really put it on topic for this board.
Well, as you suggest, this piece is as Straussian as Grainger gets, so it's an entirely appropriate topic for debate here.
The description in the review of the Chandos version- (why oddly enough? it's was his wedding present piece, anyway, no? that allows for a _very_ large chorus indeed for the half that is choral...) - is intriguing and suggests that it optionally could perhaps be rather longer still (though two sources are quoted in the two reviews which disagree a bit about the flexibility given the performers on that point.) Anyhow, will try to get a listen...
Yes, this pops up on Australia's classical radio from time to time, and it's always a joy, and I have the Marco Polo version, which seems fine. I find Grainger's music anything from seriously irritating to truly joyful, and this is definitely the latter. And what a wonderful wedding gift... up there with Wagner's birthday present to Cosima of the Siegfried Idyll .
and in a manner of speaking, Mozart's unfinished (and quite passionate) Mass in C minor. (Early for us though somehow broadly-speaking proto-Romantic, especially in the - also late-Baroque (Janus-faced?) - Qui Tollis movement...)
(Haven't heard a more obvious example, to wit Saint-Saëns' ...)
(Seems there's at least one thread there if it hasn't been discussed already- I mean that of wedding presents, or for other (threads) other forms of dedications - e.g. effective "in memoria". Etc.)