Philharmonia Orchestra / Michael Collins VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 5 FINZI Clarinet Concerto

SYMPHONY NO. 5 - CLARINET CONCERTO

Tesla Quartet / Alexander Fiterstein JOY & DESOLATION

Following its hugely acclaimed debut on Orchid Classics, the Tesla Quartet returns alongside clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein in works by Mozart, Finzi, John Corigliano and Carolina Heredia.

In its latest Orchid release, the Tesla Quartet offers fresh and vibrant interpretations of repertoire ranging from the Classical epoch to the present day. Mozart’s exquisite Clarinet Quintet finds an outstanding advocate in this performance by Alexander Fiterstein, and Finzi’s autumnal Bagatelles, originally composed for clarinet and piano, are heard here in a delightful arrangement by Christian Alexander. Contemporary American composer John Corigliano wrote his deeply-moving Soliloquy in memory of his late father, and Argentinian composer Carolina Heredia wrote Ius in Bello in 2014 as a fascinating exploration of social justice, using Latin-American popular styles to add colour and depth to the work’s tensions, its dream-like quality evoking the desire for peace.

Choir of Trinity College Cambridge / Stephen Layton FINZI

What a beautifully crafted disc this is – not just in its quality (and it really is Trinity at their absolute best) but also in its shape and programming. An all-Finzi recital sounds straightforward enough; but in opening with the Magnificat and closing with the monumental anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice, Stephen Layton transforms it from a collage into a cycle. We move from birth to death, Incarnation to Crucifixion, from the anticipation of the Annunciation to the fulfilment of the Eucharist.

The composer’s secular music is also carefully folded into this sacred narrative. The fragility and brush-away slightness of Finzi’s Robert Bridges settings and the part-song ‘White-flowering days’ come into their own here – portraits of a world already receding into the distance, the Calvary Cross rising up in the foreground.

He may have given us concertos and anthems, cantatas and chamber music but Finzi is, above all, a song composer. Trinity and Layton never let you forget that in performances in which 30 voices sing as one, where collective statements become private, lyric utterances. There’s a lightness to the unisons (a recurring Finzi gesture) and an organic, blossoming quality to the counterpoint that gives these choral works a first-person immediacy. Which makes it all the more startling when the congregation does burst in, reminding us where we are.

You have to hear the filmy, rhapsodic lightness of the Henry Vaughan setting ‘Welcome sweet and sacred feast’ to really startle at the arresting opening of ‘God is gone up’ (where the choir are joined by Trinity Brass, led by no less than David Blackadder on trumpet) – a trick Layton plays again by cutting from the brilliance of the lithe, ecstatic ‘Wherefore tonight so full of care’ into the sober, muttered darkness of Lo, the full, final sacrifice.

Finzi’s Magnificat famously lacks either a Gloria or an answering Nunc dimittis. Rather than use Holst’s familiar setting of the latter, Layton instead gives us David Bednall’s graceful 2016 setting. It’s a work with too much of its own voice for straight pastiche, but which is absolutely steeped in Finzi’s language – an affectionate, serious musical homage that takes the composer as a jumping-off point for its own lovely invention. Along with the beautiful cover art – an image of Gloucester Cathedral’s Finzi Memorial Window – and excellent booklet notes by Francis Pott, it’s just another bonus from this outstanding release. (Alexandra Coghlan / Gramophone)

Ning Feng / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Carlos Miguel Prieto ELGAR & FINZI Violin Concertos

The violin was Edward Elgar’s own instrument and his Violin Concerto is almost like a personal confession: it was ‘too emotional’, Elgar admitted, adding that he loved it nonetheless. The solo part is one of the most exhausting in the repertoire – a veritable compendium of bravura violin techniques. In an interview, Fritz Kreisler, to whom the Violin Concerto is dedicated, ranked Elgar with Beethoven and Brahms. Elgar met the challenge: his Violin Concerto combines the singing quality of Beethoven with the symphonic drama of Brahms. 

The London-born Gerald Finzi was in many ways more English than Elgar and his teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams. As can be heard in his Violin Concerto, a well kept secret from 1927, that had its first performance after the premiere only in 1999. The work lasts twenty minutes: a six-minute allegro, a superb central ten-minute molto sereno, and ending with a four-minute hornpipe rondo. It is difficult to understand why Finzi was dissatisfied with his two fast movements. The first combines beauty with energy. Through its sheer romantic beauty, the molto sereno is one of t hose pieces where the hairs stand up on the back of the neck. (from liner notes by Clemens Romijn)

Mark Padmore / Britten Sinfonia / Jacqueline Shave BENJAMIN BRITTEN Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings - Nocturne GERALD FINZI Dies Natalis

Tenor Mark Padmore has an ideal voice for these two Britten song cycles written for Peter Pears. He has the kind of musical sensitivity and attentiveness to textual subtleties that characterized Pears' singing. His voice is essentially light in the way that Pears' was, but his is infinitely more attractive. Its tone is clear and pure, with none of Pears' nasal quality, and can be sweet without sounding precious. Padmore's technique seems absolutely secure and while his instrument is not large, he can produce an impressive range of dynamics. He and horn player Stephen Bell deliver a terrific performance of the Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings, and Jacqueline Shave's leadership of the Britten Sinfonietta is energetic and nuanced. Padmore's phrasing is shapely and expressive and he can spin out the seamless legato most of these songs require. In "Hymn," he and Bell sing and play with nimble fleetness that seems thrillingly close to the edge of spinning out of control but that ultimately lands safely. The performance of "Dirge" is charged with darker-than-usual sinister energy; the running string figures that follow the canon seem here more like a demonic dance than a dirge, to wonderful, scary effect. There is no lack of topnotch recordings of the Serenade, but this is a version that anyone who loves the piece will want to hear. In Nocturne, Padmore again excels in bringing intelligent and sensitive, sometimes soaring musicality to the songs. Finzi's cycle Dies Natalis is something of a novelty, but it fits well with the Britten. His harmonic language is eloquently post-Romantic, solidly in the English pastoral tradition, and his text setting relatively conventional, but the cycle is a lovely, lyrical, entirely successful exemplar of that tradition. Serenade, written about five years after Dies Natalis, demonstrates by contrast the daring individuality of Britten's handling of texts and the rich originality of his melodic gift. The sound of Harmonia Mundi's SACD is immaculate and detailed, with a gripping sense of presence. (Stephen Eddins)

Cristo Barrios / Andrew West DEEP LIGHT

We were inspired to gather together this collection of chamber works for reasons beyond the obvious prestige of the individual composers and the importance of their works. We wanted to present the listener with a satisfying musical journey, as much through the formal variety as the expressive content of the pieces, full of contrasts that are to be found among different movements of the same piece, as well as among the five works on the recording. Rather than offering a historical overview of the programme, we would prefer to look briefly at our choice of title, Deep Light, and its various meanings. On the one hand, it aims to evoke the luminosity that lies in the depth of feeling, represented here by two major works of the German Romantic clarinet repertoire, the Grand Duo Concertant by Carl Maria von Weber and Robert Schumann’s Phantasiestücke. Emotionally profound in their darker, slower movements, these works also display an exalted brightness in their exuberant finales. On the other hand, however, the deep and the light are simply synonyms for the serious and the playful. Seen in this way, the two German works provide the weight on the CD, while the three others fall more into the second category. It is our hope that the contrasting styles and the unusual juxtaposition of repertoire will stimulate those familiar with these works into fresh ways of listening, and provide those new to them with the delight of discovery. (Cristo Barrios / Andrew West)

BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis FINZI Cello Concerto - Eclogue - New Year Music - Grand Fantasia and Toccata

A broad and meticulous selection of orchestral works and concertos by Gerald Finzi is here matched by a first-class cast of soloists, supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis, expert in British repertoire and conducting this year’s Last Night of the Proms.

Paul Watkins displays exhilarating virtuosity in the Cello Concerto, a central work on this album, composed in the wake of the devastating news that Finzi was terminally ill, but yet filled with ‘vigorous, almost turbulent thematic material’, as he wrote in the programme note for the work’s premiere at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1955.

Louis Lortie, for his part, tackles the high-spirited and majestic Grand Fantasia and Toccata, the Fantasia originally conceived as part of a concerto for piano and strings and first performed on two pianos. This contrasts with the more restrained Eclogue for Piano and Strings, timeless, and blessed with a mood of benediction.

This album also features the orchestral Nocturne (subtitled ‘New Year Music’), dark, misty, and at times ironic.

“… it [Cello Concerto] ranks as one of the finest British works for cello and orchestra. When he [Finzi] started writing it in 1951, he already knew he did not have long to live, and the wistful land of lost content that never seems too far away in any of his music pervades this work. Watkins’ performance captures that mood perfectly. Nothing is exaggerated or over-assertive … Louis Lortie is the soloist in the ruminatively beautiful Eclogue for piano and strings, and is spiritedly athletic, with full orchestra, in the neo-baroque Grand Fantasia and Toccata. Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra make a fine job of the one near rarity in this collection, the strikingly atmospheric Nocturne …” (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)