Search - Finzi, Handley, Bournemouth So :: Dies Natalis

Rare soprano recording of 'Dies Natalis'

E. Edgerton | Syracuse, NY | 06/08/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Dies Natalis," probably Finzi's most well-known piece, is usually performed by a tenor, despite the fact it was written for "high voice" (of either gender) and in fact was first performed and recorded by sopranos. I'm not sure why it became the fashion to exclusively use tenors for this piece in the decades since. This is the first recording using a soprano since 1940, so if you want a fresh interpretation of a beautiful work, definitely check this out."

A great re-issue

William J. Coburn | Basking Ridge, NJ USA | 04/15/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have been looking for some time for a recording of Gerald Finzi's best settings of English poetry, and I finally found it. It is a repressing by ArkivMusic; I am grateful that Amazon makes available at its own site many of the reissues by the other company. The disc features Dies Natalis, a small song cycle for voice and orchestra of four of the poems of the Welsh poet Thomas Traherne; he was a seventeenth century predecessor of William Wordsworth. Like Wordsworth he felt a strong connection with nature and exhibits a mystical quality in his writing.

The recording also includes the best renditions I have heard of the orchestrations by Finzi of his settings of poems of Thomas Hardy, John Milton and William Shakespeare. Finzi's settings of Hardy's "When I Set Out for Lyonesse" and five songs of Shakespeare are wonderful. My favorites are "Come away, death" and "It was a lover and his lass;" the first is very moving; the latter is rolicking.

The reissue also includes the complete booklet.

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