I think Daphnis is rather threadbare in spots - Ravel wrote with great clarity. Other composers of his generation wrote much more lush orchestrations. If it's ancient Greece you want, look no further than the works of Sir Granville Bantock:

The Cyprian Goddess
The Helena Variations
Sappho
Sapphic Poem
Thalaba the Destroyer
Pagan Symphony
Omar Khayyam is pretty great too, but awfully long.

Great, heady, lush, atmospheric music. Horrible neglected nowadays, but fortunately there's a superb collection on Hyperion and the price is right!

 

Szymanowski wrote orchestral music you can swim in.

 

Thank you mbhaub, I will definitely be looking into this. It seems like there is little digital presence recording-wise for him, is he just obscure or is it some other reason?

 

His (lush) orchestration was his strong point. For this he is often likened to Strauss but he lacked Strauss ability to write memorable material (IMO).

 

Delius without a doubt.

 

I find Bax's music to be quite lush.

 

If you want lush music, these guys will be your best friends: Respighi, Glière, Hausegger, Marx, Boehe, Novák, Glazunov, Ciurlionis, Atterberg, Suk, Wetz, Prokofiev, Arnold, Korngold, Braga Santos.

 

yes, this is a very good list, I wanted to mention some of those composers too. I would add Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherezade, Christmas Eve: Orchestral Suite, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh)

 

When I think of lush orchestration, Respighi is the first one that comes to mind.

 

The Smith brothers are good for a wallow.
Well, they aren't really brothers.
And they aren't actually "Smiths", in the English sense.

Franz Schmidt ( 1874 - 1939), an Austrian composer, pianist and cellist, wrote four rather lush symphonies and an opera titled Notre Dame.

Florent Schmitt (1870 - 1958), a French composer, is perhaps best known today for his La tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50, a long-time favorite musical slushy for me.

And ... don't forget the Russian Smith: Rimsky-Korsakov. (Okay, that one's a stretch.) But Scheherazade sounds lush to my ears.

Surprisingly perhaps, some of the lushest music comes from early work by the atonalists, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Check out the Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899) and Gurre-Lieder by Schoenberg. Berg offers the Lyric Suite, especially in its string orchestra version, and Webern will delight with Im Sommerwind (1904) and the Langsamer Satz (1905).

 

I had to google...urban dictionary here: one who becomes intoxicated after a few drinks and flirts with everyone...I had a few drinks actually...

 

some pieces worth mentioning:

Sorabji - Gulistan (if you want to listen lush, intoxicating and decadent piano music, you should check this out, and the other nocturnes too). It's almost a musical drug.

Charles Loeffler - La mort de Tintagiles

John Foulds - Three mantras

Alphons Diepenbrock - Marsyas

 

I'd suggest Coptic Light by Feldman:

But perhaps I rather ought to keep that to myself...

 

In my dictionary, when I look up the word "lush" it shows a pic of Delius.

 

Oh, I thought you meant background music for an AA meeting.

 

Schmitt and Hovhaness for me.

 

I guess anything that has some kind of sense of growing or 'having grown' but I'm not sure. Perhaps something extremely colourful or vast? Ligeti's micropolyphonic works might fit the description.