Minor Finzi here, and admirers of this fine composer should not expect any revelations on the order of Intimations of Immortality and the Clarinet Concerto. The Concerto for Small Orchestra and Solo Violin has charm, but it’s easy to see why Finzi extracted the slow movement (renaming it Introit) and dumped the rest. The outer sections aren’t bad, but they also aren’t recognizable as Finzi. Tasmin Little plays the piece beautifully, though, that middle movement very slowly and gravely indeed, and completists will want to hear the whole work. Hickox conducts the two shorter pieces for string orchestra, Prelude and Romance, well enough, but the predominance of gently elegiac music on this disc gets a bit wearing, something which is also true of the songs, lovely as they are. The composer orchestrated only one of them–When I Set Out for Lyonnesse–here transposed for tenor from the baritone original (recorded by Handley on Conifer). Five different contemporary English composers, professionally if without any special character, orchestrated the other five numbers. John Mark Ainsley evidently has become the very model of the stereotypical strangulated British tenor. At low dynamic levels he’s fine, but at the top of his range, and whenever he puts pressure on the voice, his tone wobbles alarmingly and sounds terribly forced. This deficit manages to keep the rare climaxes from ringing true. So don’t expect any revelations here, but if you want the violin concerto and the orchestral songs, you have no other options, and this will certainly do. We still desperately need a great recording of the magnificent Cello Concerto. Yo-Yo Ma’s on Lyrita has never been transferred to CD, and Chandos’ first effort was more than boring. Might a remake under Hickox be in the cards?
