Five Bagatelles, OP23, for clarinet and strings (arr. L. Ashmore)
Prelude (Allegro deciso)
Romance (Andante tranquillo)
Carol (Andante semplice)
Forlana (Allegretto grazioso)
Fughetta (Allegro vivace)
Gerald Finzi was born in London and studied with numerous distinguished musicians including R. O. Morris and Adrian Boult before teaching composition at the RAM from 1930-33. Early experiences, including the death of his first music teacher Ernest Farrar in the First World War, confirmed a certain melancholy bent in his character, and after his marriage in 1933 he settled in the Hampshire countryside where he devoted himself to composition, the compilation of a superb music library, and the cultivation of rare apple trees. His songs began to attract attention during the 1930s; meanwhile he worked on larger vocal works such as Dies natalis and Intimations of Immortality. In 1939 he founded a string orchestra in Newbury and continued to direct it throughout the war years, which he spent working for the Ministry of Transport. After the War he returned to music with a new urgency, heightened in 1951 by his being diagnosed with leukaemia. Before his untimely death in September 1956 he completed numerous choral works and a ‘Cello Concerto, having finished Intimations of Immortality in 1950 and his Clarinet Concerto the previous year.
Finzi wrote the Five Bagatelles, Op.23 between 1938 and 1943, originally for clarinet and piano. As the name implies, they are short pieces, but each has a distinctive character, coloured by Finzi’s feeling for folk-song and early English music. This arrangement for string ensemble was made for Richard Stoltzman in 1992 by Lawrence Ashmore, who played under the composer in the Newbury String Players and studied informally with him at his Hampshire home. It makes an ideal pendant to Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto and the warm and idiomatic writing for strings reflects Finzi’s own.
R.G.Bratby 2001
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
CLICK HERE for a wide and diverse selection of contemporary music and standard repertoire programme notes.