The grouping of Delius' early orchestral works into suites, either by the composer, his catalogers, or recording programs, has provoked confusion. The Suite of Three Characteristic Pieces, for instance, is a later—putative or fictitious—title covering numbers included in various catalogs either separately or as movements of a five-part Suite d'orchestre. The "characteristic" three are La Quadroöne (also called Rhadsodie Floridienne), Scherzo, and the Marche Caprice, which, jostled together with a Berceuse and Theme and Variations, make up the Suite d'orchestre. The year of composition—1889—is the same for all. This disarray owes, in part, to the fact that Delius neither published nor lobbied to have these works performed—they were not heard until after their composer's death, when Thomas Beecham, ranging through the manuscripts, edited, programmed, and recorded several of them. In his biography of Delius, published in 1959, Beecham remarks on "...the considerable quantity of work he turned out between 1889 and 1900, hardly any of which has yet reached recognition or even audition. That Delius himself is partly responsible for this neglect may be freely admitted. He viewed with indifference the publication of virtually all the output of the period above-mentioned; an indifference due to the realization of a steadily growing development within himself, which rejected the accomplishment of each succeeding lustrum as unrepresentative. Even after the all but total ripening of A Village Romeo and Juliet and the absolute fulfillment of A Mass of Life he was minded to talk about the new turn his work was about to take...." Marche Caprice was heard for the first time in 1946, while La Quadroöne and the Scherzo were revived for a recording by David Lloyd-Jones and the English Northern Philharmonia only in 1995. Such neglect is the more amazing in that, once heard, they demonstrate that the young Delius was possessed of a rich—occasionally surefire—vein in which memories of popular music and the singing in his Florida orange plantation in the early 1880s melded with the European legacy of the tone poem (or such things as Bizet's suites), and the sure instincts of a master orchestrator to effect works of unique charm, succulent evocations fraught with freshness, melodic generosity, and beguiling piquancy. La Quadroöne may, indeed, be a musical portrait of Delius' Negro mistress during his Florida period, while the elfin Scherzo projects a sensuous joy in living. Together or separately, they bid well to join the Florida Suite in popularity.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide