Composer: Gerald Finzi
Performer: John Mark Ainsley, Corydon Singers
Orchestra: Corydon Orchestra
Conductor: Matthew Best
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Hyperion
Catalogue: CDH55432
Release: 1996
Size: 248 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Dies natalis, Op. 8
01. I. Intrada
02. II. Rhapsody. Recitativo stromentato
03. III. The Rapture. Danza
04. IV. Wonder. Arioso
05. V. The Salutation. Aria
Intimations of Immortality, Op. 29
06. I. Andante sostenuto
07. II. There Was a Time When Meadow, Grove, and Stream
08. III. The Rainbow Comes and Goes
09. IV. Now, While the Birds Thus Sing a Joyous Song
10. V. Ye Blessèd Creatures, I Have Heard the Call
11. VI. Oh Evil Day! If I Were Sullen
12. VII. – But There’s a Tree, of Many, One
13. VIII. Our Birth Is But a-Sleep and a-Forgetting
14. IX. Earth Fills Her Lap with Pleasures of Her Own
15. X. O Joy! That in Our Embers
16. XI. But for Those First Affections
17. XII. Then Sing, Ye Birds, Sing, Sing a Joyous Song!
18. XIII. And O, Ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves
This album brings together two of Finzi’s most characteristic works. Dies natalis, a setting of prose and verse by the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne, is a piece of sublime concord and timelessness, music which vividly suggests the vision of a child’s innocence and unsullied perception of the world which lies at the heart of Traherne’s philosophy. Intimations of Immortality is by contrast a lament for the lost joys of Traherne’s idealized childhood. Finzi uses Wordsworth’s famous ode to convey his view that ‘a dead poet lives in many a live stockbroker’ and the result is a work of arresting beauty.