Gerald Finzi Biography - A 50th Anniversary Tribute from BBC Radio 3 - (c) BBC 2006

I urge you to put your feet up, have a glass of wine, or a cup of tea, and listen to this lovely piece! It is an absorbing biography, and an anthology of some of Mr Finzi's most telling music, including some of his song cycles and other choral music which, taken together, invite much interest. First aired in 2006 on BBC's Radio Three classical music station, Donald Macleod brings us a comprehensive, insightful and a not uncritical account of the life and work of the English composer, Gerald Finzi. Macleod can be pretty catty here - even snide in many places, but this is complimented by his affectionate humour. The programme marked the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the composer's death, aged 55. I was impelled to upload it here because this programme is no longer available, anywhere, and rather than sitting unheard in the dark vaults of the BBC's recordings archive, I wanted to make it available to the World at large, and to Finzi listeners and scholars in particular. At times, it's clear that Finzi is "guilty" of those qualities in all of us we'd rather hide away from the light of the ideal - one's prejudices, cynicism, egotism, snobbery, and other frailties. It makes his deep humanity even plainer in my eyes, and his redemption lies in his music. The images are taken from Decca "London" Album Art for their releases of British music in the 1980's. I've always been very fond of them. They are re-releases of music by British composers, featuring beautiful 1930s-1950s Batsford-style artwork in the style of Brian Cook (a Brian Cook who doesn't appear to have anything credited on the site). I'll find time shortly to add an index and credits to the music here. Note: this version corrects (for the most part) the faulty audio in the original. I shall copy Mibi's comment on the earlier version, which I plan to remove. (c) BBC Radio 3 2006 and (c) other music publishing and recording entities.