Finzi: Orchestral Works

This is drawn from two LPs issued in 1979 and 1983. All the Boult items are from SRCS 84 and the two Handley/Katin items from SRCS 92 where they were the flipside fillers for John Denman’s recording of the Clarinet Concerto. The Denman recording is due to be issued in March 2007 on Lyrita with the first ever recording of the Cello Concerto (Yo Yo Ma/RPO/Handley). Boult is in his element – the Butterworth one, that is – in the Severn Rhapsody which was clearly written under thrall of George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad and Bridge’s Summer. Blue skies, birdsong, sunny fields, cool coppices and shaded brooks – all these breathe through the pages of this Finzi score. It remains a prentice work and although a gentle yet irresistible melancholy is there its identity is not yet strongly Finzian. That was to come … and soon. It is to be heard in the intense Nocturne which in its melodic contours - their rise and fall – is unmistakably Finzi. Years later there came the music for Love’s Labo