CONTEMPLATIVE DELIUS

British composer Peter Warlock’s description of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 3 being about “a cow looking over a gate” might, to unsympathetic ears, seem aptly applied to the music of Frederick Delius.

His mature style is, to understate the matter considerably, contemplative rather than active, and contemplative tends not to sell. Yet Delius, much as he may seem like a hothouse flower, refuses to disappear--from recordings, at any rate. And recordings is where his music belongs, its quiet, rhapsodic lyricism tending to evaporate amid the rigors of concert hall presentation.

Admirers of both Delius and the new technology will welcome the arrival on compact disc (Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9040) of his exquisitely Weltschmerz- drenched 1916 Violin Concerto, with the late British violinist Ralph Holmes offering faultlessly clean, sweet-toned playing here and in a pair of Delius rarities: the early and pretty, if derivative (of Grieg and of the Victorian salon), “Suite” and “Legend.” The Royal Philharmonic under Vernon Handley provides strong orchestral underpinning throughout.

“The Song of the High Hills” (1911) is little known even among devout Delians. Scored for large orchestra and wordless chorus, inspired by Delius’s numerous Norwegian climbing trips, it evokes the awesomeness--and loneliness--of a high landscape at sunset.

The work is filled with naive-sounding nature painting--bird song, echoing winds, lightning and thunder, raindrops, etc.--achieved by the most sophisticated means of orchestration.

In its first recorded performance (Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9029) in nearly 40 years, Eric Fenby, the composer’s friend, secretary and devoted champion, leads the Royal Philharmonic with optimum sensitivity to the fragile emotional atmosphere of the score.

The overside is devoted to nine of Delius’s wimpily sweet songs sung by Felicity Lott, Sarah Walker and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson.

It’s easier to sink one’s teeth into the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, which is nowhere more accessible or universal than in his gorgeously colorful “London” Symphony of 1914.

This grand work comes to us in a splendid and inexpensive vinyl-disc remastering of the classic 1971 recording by Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic, generously coupled with the Boult-LPO interpretation of Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece, the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Angel/EMI Eminence AE-34438).

Whereas Boult employs a full symphonic string action for the Fantasia, Neville Marriner has a much smaller ensemble--the perhaps 20 strings of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields--at his disposal. The Marriner way with this composition, not necessarily dictated by the size of his forces, is quicker, less grandiose than Boult’s, but hardly less compelling.

And Marriner’s reading comes as part of an irresistible program of English music that also includes the same composer’s “The Lark Ascending,” with Iona Brown the violin soloist; the Serenade for Strings by Elgar, and Tippett’s exceedingly clever Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (Vanguard Compact Disc 25020).

Vaughan Williams’ “Sinfonia Antartica” (1952) grew out of the composer’s music for the 1947 film “Scott of the Antarctic,” about Robert Falcon Scott’s disastrous 1912 attempt to be first to reach the South Pole.

The Sinfonia is a massively sonorous tone poem, as much about the spirit of exploration as about the Antarctic landscape, as the printed score’s subscriptions--from Shelley, Coleridge, Donne and Scott himself--tell us.

In the first recording of the work in many years (Angel/EMI DS-38521), Bernard Haitink leads the London Philharmonic with tremendous power and intensity, while soprano Sheila Armstrong delivers the wordless siren-songs with appropriately otherworldly tone.

The cover art for this recording is as remarkable as the music: a striking polar scene drawn by Edward Wilson, who perished, along with Scott, during the 1912 expedition.

Benjamin Britten’s “Symphony for Cello and Orchestra,” written for Mstislav Rostropovich in 1963, is deep, dark stuff, requiring vast technical resources of the soloist and a good deal of concentration on the listener’s part.

In its first recorded performance since Rostropovich’s, the soloist is a prodigiously gifted Englishman, Raphael Wallfisch, expertly supported by the English Chamber Orchestra under Steuart Bedford.

The coupling (on Chandos ABRD 1126) consists of a suite devised by Bedford from Britten’s last opera, “Death in Venice.” Bedford, who conducted the premiere performance of the opera in 1973, has drawn on its dance and mime elements, rather than the sung portions, for his suite.

In the opera, accompanying visual images, the effect of the music is hypnotic. Out of context it seems glum, sometimes simply wan--and even dense as played by an orchestra larger, by the sound of it, then that called for in the source.