Stanford Finzi

The contrast is striking. Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto may be the more solidly constructed and efficiently crafted work, but compared with Finzi’s vitality, expressive subtlety and long-breathed lyrical charm, it’s rarely more than a worthy effort. Thea King’s shaping and colouring of Finzi’s almost improvisatory melodic lines is more deeply persuasive than any other recorded version I know – touching without being sentimental. As for the Stanford, I’ll just say that King’s playing suggests she likes it more than I did. Neither recording sounds quite as fresh and clear as they did when they first appeared, 20 years ago, but they’re still more than serviceable.

The Finzi Clarinet Concerto has been particularly lucky on CD, with a whole series of fine versions issued, including those above. Yet Emma Johnson, spontaneous in her expressiveness, brings an extra freedom and often an extra warmth to make this in many ways the most winning of all. Finzi's sinuous melodies for the solo instrument are made to sound as though the soloist is improvising them, and with extreme daring she uses the widest possible dynamic range down to a whispered pianissimo that might be inaudible in a concert-hall.[[/quote]

The Finzi Clarinet Concerto has been particularly lucky on CD, with a whole series of fine versions issued, including those above. Yet Emma Johnson, spontaneous in her expressiveness, brings an extra freedom and often an extra warmth to make this in many ways the most winning of all. Finzi's sinuous melodies for the solo instrument are made to sound as though the soloist is improvising them, and with extreme daring she uses the widest possible dynamic range down to a whispered pianissimo that might be inaudible in a concert-hall.[[/quote]

This boxed set reassembles largely analog material from existing Lyrita CDs under a new generic grouping. Dates and locations of recording sessions are not given. Lyrita seem always to have been reticent about those details. The sound is a model of its kind – Lyrita were always able to boast glorious sound. The freshly written liner-notes are by the authoritative and accessible Paul Conway and run to ten pages. These are not a simple retread of the original notes by other authors.

You might accurately describe this program as a compilation of "great hits of Christian church music", including as it does Franck's Panis angelicus, Finzi's God is gone up, Mozart's Laudate Dominum, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, Lotti's Crucifixus, Howells' Magnificat, and the overrated, overwrought, overlong (and usually excruciatingly-sung) Hear my prayer by Mendelssohn. We also get a couple of Purcell anthems, O God, Thou art my God and Remember not, O Lord, Stanford's glorious motet Justorum animae, Duruflé's tiny masterpiece Ubi caritas et amor, and the choral setting of Elgar's "Nimrod" orchestral variation (Lux aeterna).

The recital begins with Keats and ends with Shakespeare: that can’t be bad. But it also begins with Stanford and ends with Parry; what would the modernists of their time have thought about that? They would probably not have believed that those two pillars of the old musical establishment would still be standing by in 1999. And in fact how well very nearly all these composers stand! Quilter’s mild drawing–room manners might have been expected to doom him, but the three songs here – the affectionate, easy grace of his Tennyson setting, the restrained passion of his ‘Come away, death’ and the infectious zest of ‘I will go with my father a–ploughing’ – endear him afresh and demonstrate once again the wisdom of artists who recognise their own small area of ‘personal truth’ and refuse to betray it in exchange for a more fashionable ‘originality’.

Together with pianist Michael McHale, Michael Collins continues his exploration of the chamber repertoire for clarinet, turning to British music with this recital covering a hundred years of music for clarinet and piano which reflects the special relationship between English composers and this instrument. The earliest works on this recording are the Three Intermezzi and the Sonata by Charles Villiers Stanford, who made no secret of his debt to Brahms.