Gerald Finzi
Intimations of Immortality, Op. 29
For St Cecilia, Op. 30
Gilchrist, James, tenor
Bournemouth Symphony Chorus
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Hill, David, Conductor
Childhood innocence did not linger in the life of Gerald Finzi. The youngest of five children, Finzi grew up feeling alienated from his family. Mortality was no stranger, either: by age 17, he had lst his father, three brothers, and a beloved music teacher, Ernest Farrar, who was killed in The Great War. Small wonder that William Wordsworth's Recollections of Early Childhood, with its commentary on the loss of youthful innocence ("What though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight") should have captured the composer's attention. He began setting Wordsworth to music in the late 1930s, not completing the work now known as Intimations of Immortality until 1950.
The piece is vintage Finzi: sweeping melodies, lush, colorful orchestration, emphatic fealty to text, and a quintessentially British idiom that tips a cap to Elgar and Vaughan-Williams while remaining itself. I find it very moving, partly because Wordsworth speaks to me- a 53-year-old caught up in a dizzying panoply of mid-life changes- with uncommon directness, ("though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; we will grieve not." Sigh. I'm trying.) Anyway, for all its bitter-sweetness, the music is as rich and resolute as the text, running a gamut of emotions from sadness to stoicism to ringing exultation.
The performance here is strong, though chorally one could ask for more. Bournemouth sports a fine orchestra; and, spurred on by Maestro Hill, the players deliver plenty of passion and sweep. James Gilchrist is your basic honey-voiced British tenor, crooning his way through the score, over-enunciationg consonants as he goes. He's easy on the ear, but how many Rs do we really need in the word "fresh"? The kicker is the choir, which makes pleasant sounds but converys little in the way of poetic oomph owing to namby-pamby diction and indifferent engineering, which buries the singers beneath the orchestral textures and never lets them up. This continues into St Cecilia, yet another lovely work, where the choir can sound gorgeous one minute and fall out of the sonic frame the next.
Your decision is made easier by the relative dearth of competition in the 40-minute Intimations. There is an EMI release (64720) with tenor Philip Langridge and Richard Hickox on the podiumm as well as Hyperion 66876, a more intimate reading conducted by Matthew Best with John Mark Ainsley handling the solos. But, choral amnesia aside, this one has many virtues and its general availability at the Naxos price sweetens the pot further for Finzians. Greenfield, American Record Guide, October 2006
For St Cecilia, Op. 30
Gilchrist, James, tenor
Bournemouth Symphony Chorus
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Hill, David, Conductor
Childhood innocence did not linger in the life of Gerald Finzi. The youngest of five children, Finzi grew up feeling alienated from his family. Mortality was no stranger, either: by age 17, he had lst his father, three brothers, and a beloved music teacher, Ernest Farrar, who was killed in The Great War. Small wonder that William Wordsworth's Recollections of Early Childhood, with its commentary on the loss of youthful innocence ("What though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight") should have captured the composer's attention. He began setting Wordsworth to music in the late 1930s, not completing the work now known as Intimations of Immortality until 1950.
The piece is vintage Finzi: sweeping melodies, lush, colorful orchestration, emphatic fealty to text, and a quintessentially British idiom that tips a cap to Elgar and Vaughan-Williams while remaining itself. I find it very moving, partly because Wordsworth speaks to me- a 53-year-old caught up in a dizzying panoply of mid-life changes- with uncommon directness, ("though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; we will grieve not." Sigh. I'm trying.) Anyway, for all its bitter-sweetness, the music is as rich and resolute as the text, running a gamut of emotions from sadness to stoicism to ringing exultation.
The performance here is strong, though chorally one could ask for more. Bournemouth sports a fine orchestra; and, spurred on by Maestro Hill, the players deliver plenty of passion and sweep. James Gilchrist is your basic honey-voiced British tenor, crooning his way through the score, over-enunciationg consonants as he goes. He's easy on the ear, but how many Rs do we really need in the word "fresh"? The kicker is the choir, which makes pleasant sounds but converys little in the way of poetic oomph owing to namby-pamby diction and indifferent engineering, which buries the singers beneath the orchestral textures and never lets them up. This continues into St Cecilia, yet another lovely work, where the choir can sound gorgeous one minute and fall out of the sonic frame the next.
Your decision is made easier by the relative dearth of competition in the 40-minute Intimations. There is an EMI release (64720) with tenor Philip Langridge and Richard Hickox on the podiumm as well as Hyperion 66876, a more intimate reading conducted by Matthew Best with John Mark Ainsley handling the solos. But, choral amnesia aside, this one has many virtues and its general availability at the Naxos price sweetens the pot further for Finzians. Greenfield, American Record Guide, October 2006
Originaly Posted By Simon Morley
11 comments:
Dear Horacio, jungle opera house builder, thank you so much for this upload.
Please re-up this when you have time. Thx!
Fabuloso!
Thank you very much :)
Great! What a pity, that the links are down - could you please reupload?
thank you and Simon!
Could you reup? Thanks in advance
New link
https://nitroflare.com/view/185F979B567603A/GFinziIntiofInmortForStCecilia.rar
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