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Track(s) taken from CDD22070

Before and After Summer, Op 16

composer
first performed by Robert Irwin and Frederick Stone in a BBC broadcast on 17 October 1949
author of text

Stephen Varcoe (baritone), Clifford Benson (piano)
Recording details: December 1984
The New Concert Hall, University of South Wales, Cardiff, Wales
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: January 1990
Total duration: 30 minutes 19 seconds

Cover artwork: Derwent Fells and Newlands Valley, Cumbria.
Photograph by Norman Feakins / Power Pix
 

Before and After Summer contains two of Finzi’s finest ‘vision’ images: the delicate dream-dance in ‘The Self-Unseeing’ and the urgent dissolving modulations of ‘In the Mind’s Eye’. In this set too is the improbable ‘Channel Firing’, a long dramatic piece in which, undaunted by Hardy’s immense subject and his colloquial expression of it, Finzi through-composes nine verses with only the gunfire figure and a little melodic phrase to hold them together. This set was first performed by Robert Irwin and Frederick Stone in a BBC broadcast on 17 October 1949.

from notes by Diana McVeagh © 1989
Diana McVeagh’s Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music is published by Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge

Other albums featuring this work

The Soldier
Studio Master: SIGCD592Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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