Gerald Finzi by Footpath and Stile

Gerald Finzi By Footpath and Stile Finzi Quartet with Marcus Farnsworth baritone Robert Plane clarinet & Ruth Bolister oboe 9 0 1 0 1 S E R By Footpath and Stile Music for string quartet by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) 1. Romance, Op. 11 [7:13] 10. Elegy, Op. 22 [7:52] arr. for string quartet by Christian Alexander arr. for string quartet by Christian Alexander By Footpath and Stile, Op. 2 Five Bagatelles, Op. 23 Finzi Quartet for baritone and string quartet arr. for clarinet and string quartet by Christian Alexander 2. Paying calls [4:13] 11. Prelude: Allegro deciso [3:27] Sara Wolstenholme violin 1 3. Where the picnic was [4:27] 12. Romance: Andante tranquillo [5:03] Natalie Klouda violin 2 4. The Oxen [3:11] 13. Carol: Andante semplice [1:51] Ruth Gibson viola 5. The master and the leaves [3:16] 14. Forlana: Allegretto grazioso [3:00] Lydia Shelley cello 6. Voices from things growing [7:01] 15. Fughetta: Allegro vivace [2:13] with in a churchyard 7. Exeunt omnes [3:21] Total playing time [73:05] Marcus Farnsworth baritone Robert Plane clarinet 8. Prelude [5:01] Ruth Bolister oboe About the Finzi Quartet: arr. for string quartet by Christian Alexander ‘… a beautiful, clean, elegant sound’ 9. Interlude, Op. 21 [11:47] www.bachtrack.com for oboe and string quartet ‘… quite exceptional ... they chose to play with a real sweetness’ Mundo Classico About Marcus Farnsworth: ‘... a conspicuously shining star ... classic dignity and elegance’ The Telegraph Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): national boundaries, peace treaties, By Footpath and Stile reparations, The League of Nations and spiralling inflation all served to restructure In 1941 Gerald Finzi wrote, in a document the routines of daily life and define the entitled Absalom's Place – a very personal decades to come. And amidst all of this, attempt to summarise his artistic beliefs – every day, people moved forward in their ‘… some curious force compels us to preserve lives trying to deal with the ineluctable impact and project into the future the essence of of personal loss, premature deaths, and lost our individuality, and, in doing so, to project love. Whether writing music during this something of our age and civilization.’ And period was a search for catharsis, a desire as one of England’s best-loved twentieth- to construct a memorial to lost lives and century composers, Finzi’s music can seem lost times, or an attempt to cast off towards at once of its time yet also timeless. the future for Finzi the artist, we find in By Footpath and Stile, Op. 2, the seeds of Finzi’s own time started in July 1901, born into lifelong obsessions: the passing of time, comparative wealth and the comfortable mortality, the poetry of Thomas Hardy, surroundings of Hamilton Terrace in London’s and most importantly, song itself. Here too, Maida Vale; while his life ended in an Oxford in Finzi’s first published work, can be heard hospital in September 1956, during the the steering influences of composers and seventeenth year of his family’s occupancy folk song enthusiasts Ralph Vaughan Williams of Church Farm in the remote Hampshire and George Butterworth, both of whom village of Ashmansworth. The music in this had composed chamber music song cycles. recording covers most of Finzi’s life as a professional composer: from early published Departing the hilly Gloucestershire countryside successes, through increasingly self-assured for the more propitious London music scene mid-career work, to music completed nearer of the late 1920s, Finzi was still attempting to the end of his relatively curtailed life. find his voice as a composer. Looking not only to the music of Vaughan Williams, other As the shadow of the First World War began illustrious contemporaries and the English to stretch far into the future, the young folk-song heritage, but also back towards to Gerald Finzi was only beginning to find his the Baroque era, Finzi was yet to find his stride. Gerald Finzi voice as a composer. The grim reality of war The Prelude for strings from this time does (photograph courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes) ramified throughout Europe; reshaped not sing with the confidence and craftsmanship Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): national boundaries, peace treaties, By Footpath and Stile reparations, The League of Nations and spiralling inflation all served to restructure In 1941 Gerald Finzi wrote, in a document the routines of daily life and define the entitled Absalom's Place – a very personal decades to come. And amidst all of this, attempt to summarise his artistic beliefs – every day, people moved forward in their ‘… some curious force compels us to preserve lives trying to deal with the ineluctable impact and project into the future the essence of of personal loss, premature deaths, and lost our individuality, and, in doing so, to project love. Whether writing music during this something of our age and civilization.’ And period was a search for catharsis, a desire as one of England’s best-loved twentieth- to construct a memorial to lost lives and century composers, Finzi’s music can seem lost times, or an attempt to cast off towards at once of its time yet also timeless. the future for Finzi the artist, we find in By Footpath and Stile, Op. 2, the seeds of Finzi’s own time started in July 1901, born into lifelong obsessions: the passing of time, comparative wealth and the comfortable mortality, the poetry of Thomas Hardy, surroundings of Hamilton Terrace in London’s and most importantly, song itself. Here too, Maida Vale; while his life ended in an Oxford in Finzi’s first published work, can be heard hospital in September 1956, during the the steering influences of composers and seventeenth year of his family’s occupancy folk song enthusiasts Ralph Vaughan Williams of Church Farm in the remote Hampshire and George Butterworth, both of whom village of Ashmansworth. The music in this had composed chamber music song cycles. recording covers most of Finzi’s life as a professional composer: from early published Departing the hilly Gloucestershire countryside successes, through increasingly self-assured for the more propitious London music scene mid-career work, to music completed nearer of the late 1920s, Finzi was still attempting to the end of his relatively curtailed life. find his voice as a composer. Looking not only to the music of Vaughan Williams, other As the shadow of the First World War began illustrious contemporaries and the English to stretch far into the future, the young folk-song heritage, but also back towards to Gerald Finzi was only beginning to find his the Baroque era, Finzi was yet to find his stride. Gerald Finzi voice as a composer. The grim reality of war The Prelude for strings from this time does (photograph courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes) ramified throughout Europe; reshaped not sing with the confidence and craftsmanship of his later works but, in its song-like melodies Exhortation, Op. 14, and Earth and Air and Rain, close to the end of the composer’s life, have all been arranged in recent years by the and relatively simple harmonies, the young Op. 15 (Finzi’s first music to be taken on by resurrected and tweaked for a Newbury current writer. This version of the Five Bagatelles, composer’s desire to communicate directly a mainstream music publisher – what is now String Players concert. It does not aspire commissioned for David Campbell and the and with explicit clarity is easily apparent. Boosey & Hawkes and still Finzi’s publisher), to the emotional gravitas, the Sibelius-like Endellion Quartet was first performed on the both settings of poetry by Thomas Hardy, architectural strength, or the harmonic centenary of Gerald Finzi’s birth, while the Living in London for eight years, very much the hand of a considerably more confident intensity of the Cello Concerto (a work which arrangements of Romance, Elegy and Prelude part of the contemporary English musical and increasingly skilled composer is clearly dominated the composer’s final year and were all commissioned more recently by landscape, teaching at the Royal Academy at work. The rather drawn out gestation of was first broadcast the evening before his the Finzi Quartet. of Music, and starting what would become his stunning Dies natalis, Op. 8, what was death); but as is the case with much of Finzi’s ongoing dialogues with other prominent eventually a five-movement cantata for output, it is a musical gem. Small-scale and Making arrangements of another composer’s musicians (most notably Howard Ferguson), high voice and strings, also took place intimate, song-like in its flow, it is instantly music can be an onerous business, which Finzi began to grow in assuredness as a throughout this period. And it was at this recognisable as the musical voice of Gerald carries with it a tremendous weight of composer. In 1933 he married the artist time Finzi composed his Romance for string Finzi. This music speaks with unpretentious responsibility, every bit as taxing and absorbing and poet Joyce Black (Joy Finzi’s life was to orchestra, Op. 11 and Interlude for oboe directness and emotional openness; it is as composing one’s own music, maybe even stretch decades beyond that of her husband and string quartet, Op. 21. Ever modest packed with an enviable degree of melodic more so. Finzi was a painstaking, meticulous Gerald's), and together they became a and self-effacing, Finzi told his friend invention and a consistent sense of the composer who paid scrupulous attention to remarkable and at times progressive force Howard Ferguson ‘There’s some decent composer’s own harmonic language.

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