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Track(s) taken from CDH55009

Lo, the full, final sacrifice, Op 26

composer
1946; STB soli, SATB divisi + organ; festival anthem; commissioned by the Reverend Walter Hussey
author of text
Hymns of St Thomas Aquinas: Adoro Te and Lauda Sion salvatorem

Worcester Cathedral Choir, Donald Hunt (conductor), Adrian Partington (organ)
Recording details: March 1983
Worcester Cathedral, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Tony Faulkner
Release date: January 1990
Total duration: 15 minutes 30 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Sebastian Braw-Smith (treble), Julian Stocker (tenor), Julian Empett (bass), Westminster Abbey Choir, James O'Donnell (conductor), Daniel Cook (organ)
The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Stephen Layton (conductor), Alexander Hamilton (organ)
St Paul's Cathedral Choir, John Scott (conductor), Andrew Lucas (organ)
King's College Choir Cambridge, Sir Stephen Cleobury (conductor), James Micklethwaite (tenor), Charlie Baigent (bass)

Reviews

‘A very happy record’ (BBC Record Review)

‘Anglophiles will have much to reward their appetites here—warm and lovely compositional style, richly sonorous performance, knowing interpretations, and spacious audio’ (Fanfare, USA)
In noting how far Lo, the full, final sacrifice sits from the choral sound and manner of Vaughan Williams, Banfield observes also its distance from Finzi’s other metaphysical settings, commenting on its ‘intense, almost necromantic atmosphere, laden with incense’. This, indeed, was fairly specifically requested when the work was commissioned by the Revd Walter Hussey for the patronal festival of St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. Finzi’s sensitive conflation of two poems by Richard Crashaw (1612/3–1649), both free translations from Latin hymns by St Thomas Aquinas, resulted in a musical conception that grew and grew from the sombre contemplation of its opening. Focus on the Eucharist (suggested by Hussey) is maintained through the recurrent imagery of manna, bread, wine and redemption. The central exhortation ‘Rise, Royal Sion!’ calls forth one of Finzi’s most radiantly majestic passages, but elsewhere the music is punctuated by exquisitely introspective solo material or the highlighting of individual vocal lines. What could have degenerated into an unworkably discursive series of episodes is unified by Finzi’s skill in the use of ‘head motifs’, much like the ‘corymbus’ notion of Edmund Rubbra, cited earlier, whereby ideas heading in fresh and unexpected directions spring initially from a common source, in apparent illustration of Crashaw: ‘Nor let my days / Grow, but in new powers to thy name and praise.’ Ultimately the subdued opening music returns (‘When this dry soul those eyes shall see’), followed by a recurrence of the text’s opening couplet. The E major Amen that follows is beautiful not only for itself, but also for its ‘healing’ restoration of F sharp to what had previously been a modal scale ‘disfigured’ by a dissonant F natural; yet both these competing entities are then held in unresolved balance within the very final bars, like the two inseparable wings of an eternal truth.

from notes by Francis Pott © 2019

Other albums featuring this work

Evensong Live 2019
Studio Master: KGS0038-DDownload onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Finzi, Bax & Ireland: Choral Music
Studio Master: CDA68167Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Finzi: Choral works
Studio Master: CDA68222Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
The English Anthem, Vol. 2
CDA66519Download only
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