His best-known composition is probably the large-scale Piano Sonata in D minor he started while still a student at the Royal Academy of Music, which communicates in a potent late romantic style.
[4][5] Although ten years Benjamin's elder, Henry always remained close to his younger brother and, like their father, both men had a reputation for being affable and approachable, irrespective of position and fame.
[1] Despite an indifferent record at school, by the age of 14 Dale was already an accomplished organist and had written a small collection of compositions, including a concert overture called Horatius, inspired by Thomas Babington Macaulay.
[1][11][12][13] In the opinion of Francis Pott, "the swirling arpeggiation and rich variety of gesture imply an attempted pianistic parallel to Wagnerian and Straussian orchestration, thus carrying the illusion of symphonic transcription to new places".
"[11] Despite entering the repertoire of concert pianists like York Bowen, Myra Hess, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Irene Scharrer and Moura Lympany,[12] by the 1920s Dale's sonata had fallen out of fashion.
[11] In recent years, however, the work has been championed on CD by Peter Jacobs (on Continuum, 1992),[13] Mark Bebbington (SOMM, 2010)[14] and Danny Driver (Hyperion, 2011),[12] contributing to a current revival of interest in Dale's music.
[1] Dale's next published work was his three movement Suite for Viola and Piano—another sonata in all but name—dating from 1906, the first of a series of compositions written expressly for the violist and RAM professor Lionel Tertis.
[6] This ambitious work stretched the boundaries of viola technique at the time and remains challenging even today: Tertis frequently played it either with Bowen at the piano, or in a later arrangement of the last two movements with orchestral accompaniment (first performed in a 1911 Royal Philharmonic Society concert under Arthur Nikisch), which he had encouraged Dale to produce.
[1] Wood was an admirer of Dale's music and described his once popular voices and orchestral setting of Christina Rossetti's Before the Paling of the Stars (composed in 1912) as "a choral gem.
[21] Despite deteriorating health after the war, Dale was able to travel round the world, examining in Australia and New Zealand for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.