E.J. Moeran & Gerald Finzi - Orchestral Works

Moeran & Finzi Orchestral Works

Ernest John MOERAN (194-1950)

Sinfonietta

Serenade in G

Gerald FINZI (1901-1956)

The Fall of the Leaf

Nocturne - New Year Music

Northern Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

A very pleasant disc of orchestral works by Moeran and Finzi, sensitively played by the Northern Sinfonia, and recorded straightforwardly, with no quirks, although the resonance of All Saints' Church in Newcastle upon Tyne sometimes blurs the timpani rolls. Richard Hickox has flair for this vein of British music and brings out both composers' considerable skill in the application of orchestral colours, mostly pastel shades in Finzi, but bolder in the Moeran pieces, which are among his more extrovert compositions.

Moeran's Sinfonietta has been brightly recorded by Norman Del Mar for Chandos and anyone who possesses it needn't look further. It's a delightful work, eclectic like most of Moeran, but tautly and expertly composed in an honourable tradition of lighter music by British composers. I can't think why we don't hear it more often in the concert-hall—well, of course, I can think why: the chronic timidity of audiences and managements. The Serenade, too, is a charmer but rambles a bit too much for its own good.

The two Finzi pieces are wistfully nostalgic and date from the 1920s. The Fall of the Leaf was to be part of a trilogy but was left only partly scored. The orchestration was completed—with touching fidelity—by Howard Ferguson in 1957. The music is characteristically melancholy and Hickox goes to the heart of its reticent poetry. My preference though, is for the New Year Music, which so poignantly expresses the 'sober sadness' of New Year's Eve and here receives a performance to match its evocative qualities.'

Gramophone magazine