Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)

A very important album, but also a frustrating one. Finzi's setings of Hardy's poems are unique in their sound and in their excellence. mAny other have tried their hand at it. Indeed, it probably quicker to list the Twentieth-Century Eknglish composers who DIDN"T try it. But Finzi impresses me as having the most consisitent appropriate musical "feel" for these late words of Hardy. Usually Hyperion recordings are magnificent productions artistically, sonically, and graphically, but in this show more effort, recording engineer Antony Howell and producer Mark Brown fell down badly: voice levels are all wrong, and the balance of piano to voice makes it souns sometimes as if the two artists are in separate rooms. What a pity. Still, such as you can hear of it, the singing by Hill and Varcoe is exemplary. show less

Finzi's music was influenced by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and other British composers of the earlier generation. The majority of his music is vocal, perhaps because he had a wide knowledge of English poetry and enjoyed it greatly. However, he is best known today for his clarinet concerto from the late 1940s. Finzi’s output is not large, and his life was cut short when he was diagnosed with a fatal disease when he was about 50 and died a few years later.

The Clarinet Concerto is Finzi’s show more best-known piece. It is a masterpiece of the clarinet repertoire, worthy of standing beside the handful of other clarinet concerti including Mozart and Weber. It dates from the late 1940s.

The work runs approximately 30 minutes, is cast in the usual three movements, and is scored for strings and solo clarinet. Within the smaller-scaled orchestration, Finzi pours highly personal and intense emotions that are resolved over the course of the work.

The first two movements are filled with melancholy and even anguish that wells up above a sometimes placid exterior. These emotions are resolved in a joyous, sunny, and “hummable” finale filled with good spirits that are only briefly marred by a return to the emotions of the first two movements. show less

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