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Recital
11 December 2001
Wigmore Hall, London
Gerald Finley
Julius Drake
Franz Schubert:
An Silvia D. 891
Ständchen D. 889
Lied des gefangenen Jagers D. 843
Carl Loewe:
Herodes Klage um Marianne op. 4 No. 1
Totenklage Op. 4 No. 5
Jordans Ufer Op. 13 No. 4
Die Sonne der Schlaflosen Op. 13 no. 6
Robert Schumann:
An den Mond Op. 95 No. 2
Dem Helden Op. 95 No. 3
Aus den hebräischen Gesängen Op. 25 No. 15
Die Flüchtlinge Op. 122 No. 2
Jean Sibelius:
Hallila, uti storm och i regn Op. 60 No. 1
Kom nu hit, do^d Op. 60 no. 1
Erich Korngold:
My Mistress' Eyes
Interval
Gerald Finzi: Earth and Air and Rain Op. 15
1. ‘Summer Schemes’
2. ‘When I set out for Lyonnesse’
3. ‘Waiting Both’
4. ‘The Phantom’
5. ‘So I have fared’
6. ‘Rollicum-rorum’
7. ‘To Lizbie Browne’
8. ‘The Clock of the Years’
9. ‘In a Churchyard’
10. ‘Proud Songsters’
What the critics say
Andrew Clements for The Guardian, December 15, 2001 http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,705015,00.html
Rating: Four out of five stars
The Wigmore Hall's centenary tribute to Gerald Finzi ended with the most extensive of his settings of Thomas Hardy's words, Earth and Air and Rain. In fact, the baritone Gerald Finley and his pianist Julius Drake devoted their whole recital to English poetry: the Finzi collection was prefaced with songs by European composers to texts that, originally at least, were written in English.
Shakespeare and Byron loomed largest in this sequence. The recital opened with Schubert's An Silvia (to words taken from Two Gentleman of Verona) and Ständchen (from Cymbeline), delivered with restrained intimacy by Finley. Sibelius's dark, rather gruff reworkings of two of Feste's songs from Twelfth Night, and Korngold's English-language version of My Mistress' Eye from the same play, sickly sweet but seductively sung, signalled the end of the first half.
Four of Loewe's Byron settings offered something very different: theatrical declamation in Herodes Klage um Marianne, rather anonymous lyricism in Totenklage and Jordans Ufer, and something more intriguingly indeterminate in Die Sonne der Schlafosen, whose text in a different German version was set by Schumann in An den Mond. Most striking of all, though, was Die Flüchtlinge, with a text by Shelley, written at the very end of Schumann's life; it is a haunted melodrama that creates its own miniature genre.
Earth and Air and Rain is not exactly a song cycle, though the sequence is very carefully balanced and ordered around the cyclic themes of transience and permanence. But it contains some of Finzi's finest settings, and that, as this series of concerts and the rest of the centenary offerings has reminded us, is saying quite a lot. The jaunty, bracing When I Set Out for Lyonnesse is his best-known song, delivered by Finley with a swagger that was gradually transmuted into mystery. The deceptively simple Waiting Both is as perfectly formed as one could imagine, while in To Lizbie Browne and The Clock of the Years the music fits the words like a glove. Finley and Drake paced them all tactfully, precisely mediating between relaxed storytelling and rapt introspection. Here was very fine singing of truly great songs.