Various performers EMI Classics (18 CDs)****

He was a "chronicler and poet of transience", says the booklet for this mega-set issued to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Delius next month. Delius penned some of the most beautiful, dreamy music ever written and was initially more famous in Germany than in his native England (Richard Strauss was an admirer), until the great conductor Beecham took up his cause. Beecham's unrivalled work is represented here, both as conductor and pianist, in an in-depth survey which features recordings from every decade back to the 1920s and includes the complete opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, to be seen at the Wexford Festival next year. Delius's atmospherically enchanting regret and melancholy, often expressed with time-stilling rhythmic inertia, are an acquired taste. There's hardly a better vehicle than this set either to acquire or indulge it. See url.ie/57cs