Gerald FINZI (1901-1956)
A Severn Rhapsody, Op.3 [6:14]
Nocturne (New Year Music) Op.7 [10:23]
Three Soliloquies for small orchestra (from the Suite Loves Labours Lost,
Op.28) [4:33]
Romance for string orchestra, Op.11 [8:08]
Prelude for string orchestra, Op.25 [5:16]
The Fall of the Leaf, Elegy for orchestra, Op.20 [9:14]
Introit
for small orchestra and solo violin, Op.6 [9:48]
Eclogue
for piano and string orchestra, Op.10 [10:33]
Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra Op.38 [15:14]
Rodney Friend (violin)
Peter Katin (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Adrian Boult
New Philharmonia Orchestra/Vernon Handley (Eclogue and Fantasia)
rec. 1977/78. ADD.
Reviewed as download from press access.
LYRITA SRCD.239
[79:26]
Why am I returning to this recording fourteen years after its release, when
it received three reviews at the time? Well, fourteen years is almost three times the five summers that it took
Wordsworth, one of Finzi’s favourite poets, to become a changed
personality, according to his poem Tintern Abbey. We all need a reminder
from time to time, and I have just been reminded what an ethereal work the Eclogue is, having heard it performed on BBC Radio 3 in another
recording. I hadn’t heard it for some time, and I simply had to listen
again to it from this Lyrita album. It’s also a good time to remind readers that
MusicWeb no longer sells Lyrita recordings, but you can obtain a 10%
discount from
Wyastone
with the code MusicWeb10.
With several fine recordings to choose from, including Chandos CHSA5214,
with Cello Concerto, Grand Fantasia, etc. (Louis Lortie, BBCSO/Sir Andrew
Davis –
review), and Naxos 8.555766, also with Cello Concerto, Grand Fantasia and Toccata
(Peter Donhoe, Northern Sinfonia/Howard Griffiths –
review), this Lyrita reissue, drawn from two LPs, remains my Desert Island
choice. Only the alternative release of this performance on a highly
desirable budget-price 4-CD set of British music for piano and orchestra
causes me to hesitate (SRCD.2345, around £17 –
review
–
review).
That means weighing the other wonderful – often heart-wrenchingly beautiful
– music on the Finzi recording against the huge bargain of all those works
for piano and orchestra – and there is another equally attractive and
inexpensive Lyrita collection of string concertos (SRCD.2346 –
review
–
review). I really can’t choose for you. All very well, you will say, for those
who get their review copies free; I have to admit that it sometimes seems
like ‘kid in the candy store’ time when so much wonderful music, new and
old, is available for myself and my team of download reviewers.
If you thought that Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro was the
apogee of musical beauty – as, indeed, it is, especially in the classic
Barbirolli recording (Warner 9029675810, download only) – or that Vaughan
Williams’ The Lark Ascending was the only work deserving of
regularly coming top or close to the top of the ClassicFM popularity chart,
try this Finzi collection and you will find that those two works don’t have
a monopoly on beauty. In fact, my own choice among Vaughan Williams’ output
would be the Tallis Fantasia, building on some of the plainest
music that the Tudor composer ever wrote to create a masterpiece, but
that’s another story.
Almost everything on the Lyrita Finzi collection is deeply felt, especially
in these performances. A recent Finzi collection on Decca comes nowhere
close for me (4789357). I found some good things to say about that,
including the version of Eclogue that Radio 3 chose to play, but
overall it’s very disappointing, with vocal items reimagined for
instruments –
DL News 2016/4
.
Of all the music on the Lyrita recording, the Eclogue is arguably
the most ethereal. Planned as the slow movement of a piano concerto, how
fortunate we are that Finzi didn’t jettison it, but preserved it in its own
right and gave it such an apt title. It fully deserves to endure as long as
Virgil’s Eclogues. It may lack the element of reality that
underlies Virgil’s rural idylls – the very first of his Eclogues
contrasts the “I’m all right” countryman lounging in the shade of his
favourite tree with his neighbour who is being evicted – but realism or
social commentary is not the purpose of the music. And if it’s something
more powerful that you would like to follow this piece, Finzi is your man
with the closing Grand Fantasia and Toccata, too. Of course, being Finzi,
the music never gets too ‘grand’ or takes itself too seriously, and Peter
Katin and Vernon Handley with the New Philharmonia are the ideal team to
being both concertante works to you.
Like Eclogue, Introit is a fragment from what was
intended as a longer work, in this case a violin concerto. The complete
work has been reconstructed on a Chandos recording, but even in the shorter
from it’s a beautiful piece, and it receives a performance to match, with
Rodney Friend as soloist; as in all the pieces up to that point, the LPO and
Sir Adrian Boult are also on top form here.
What would be the best recommendation to follow this Lyrita Finzi CD?
Perhaps one of the two 4-CD sets that I have mentioned, but don’t forget
that Lyrita have another Finzi recording with Vernon Handley at the helm,
containing his setting of Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality
(SRCD.238, with Hadley The Trees so high, also reissued in 2007 –
Recording of the Month:
review
–
review
–
review).
Not the least of the reasons for returning to these Lyrita recordings is
the fact that I now have access to them in CD-quality lossless sound instead of the
mp3 that I have heard before. (For my earlier take on SRCD.239 and several
other Finzi recordings, please see
June 2012/1). Mp3 inserts gaps where there are none in the music, and there are none
in a lossless download, thus solving my sole grumble about SRCD.238 in
January 2009. These transfers may be taken from 1970s analogue tapes, but they are very
good of their kind and can bear comparison with the Chandos recording
of the Eclogue, even as heard in 24-bit stereo. Does access to improved
sound quality mean that I shall be returning to some more of these Lyritas?
It’s quite possible.
Brian Wilson
Previous reviews:
Rob Barnett ~ Gary Higginson
~ Jonathan Woolf (Recording of the Month)
