Customer Reviews

Earth and Air and Rain

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Gerald Finzi's song-cycles are the most celebrated works in his small and carefully composed output. His settings of poetry by Thomas Hardy, not easy words to tackle, stand alongside the similarly-fused art of Faure & Verlaine or Wolf & Morike. The eager student of English song should discover in Finzi something much more exciting than Quilter's or Head's efforts; he and Vaughan Williams are clearly at the apex of early-20thC. songwriting in the English tradition. I can think of few works that appeal in such a pastoral, largely diatonic way, yet prove their worth as well-wrought compositions. This is Finzi all over. Try his choral music by the Finzi Singers on Chandos as well.

These are settings of words of Thomas Hardy by the early twentieth century English composer Gerald Finzi. They are much like the song cycles of Vaughan Williams or George Butterworth--lyric, not very harmonically adventurous. The poems are typical Hardy, about as depressing as possible. The poems are mostly obscure; excepy for "Channel Firing" I had not seen any of them before I heard this album. Finzi's music perfectly fits the words, and the voices of Varcoe and Hill perfectly fit the music. These songs are the best of the English lieder before Britten. i think they belong on the saame shelf with Brahms and Schubert. This is a really tremendous album, and if you think you might even remotely be interested in it, I urge you to acquire it at once.