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Meditations at Sunset
"... a kind of classy disc for days when the world gets too much with us - or perhaps background for making woopie. William Boughton brings an elegant romanticism to all these works, mercifully free of slimy sentimentality ..."
Fanfare
shipping_weight
0.135000
kg
£10.99
In stock
Catalogue Number
NI7010
| Review | "I have ten individual recordings of Finzi's Eclogue for Piano and String Orchestra, and I believe that Martin Jones' rendering is the very best of them. The Eclogue may well be my favorite work of classical music, and I have tried to lay my hands on every recording that exists on CD. I regularly search for new performances of this rare gem. Gerald Finzi was a private and elusive personage. He preferred living in the countryside where he cultivated an orchard of unusual apple species, amassed an enormous library of rare books, and brought into being his musical compositions. When, in 1951, he learned he was suffering with Hodgkin's disease he kept secret the knowledge of it confined to his family -- and yet managed to live out the remainder of his all-too-brief life by continuing to work between medical treatments. In the Eclogue we hear Finzi reveal himself at his most personal. Originally drafted in 1929, the Eclogue for Piano and String Orchestra grew out of the slow movement of an unfinished piano concerto. Finzi twice reshaped it over some twenty-odd years until he was content to let it stand on its own as a single movement. The manuscript was discovered by his friend and colleague, the pianist John Russell. Eclogue is the classical name for a pastoral poem, and -- considering Finzi's penchant for the countryside -- the title was fittingly given to it by his widow Joy, eldest son Christopher, and lifelong friend Howard Ferguson. Sadly, it was to remain unheard during the composer's lifetime. Kathleen Long and the Kalmar Orchestra gave the première in 1957 at a memorial concert to Finzi four months after his death at the Victoria and Albert museum in London." Anonymous |
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