Noticeboard
Welcome to our Members’ Noticeboard. This is an area where you can post details of forthcoming Finzi concerts that you’d like to bring to the attention of other Members, as well as news of other related events and activities.
If you have an event you’d like to appear here please let us know at info@finzifriends.org.uk
Oare String Orchestra Concert
Oare String Orchestra, conducted by Peter Aviss, viola soloist Martin Outram.
On Saturday 29th January 2022 at 7.30pm. Tickets at the door.
An all British programme to celebrate the start of our 40th year:
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Aviss Viola Concerto
Finzi Prelude
Howells Elegy for Viola, string quartet and string orchestra
Elgar Introduction & Allegro
FINZI FRIENDS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2020
Due to the prevailing Coronavirus pandemic and the national restrictions on holding events and meetings, the Finzi Friends Committee decided it was not possible to hold a public AGM and instead followed the Charity Commission’s guidelines for proceeding under these circumstances. The Reports and the Accounts have been prepared as usual and circulated to Members. They can also be accessed by Finzi Friends under the AGM section of the Members Area.
Any ratification of issues and approval of 2020 Accounts will be finalised at the 2021 AGM (date to be confirmed).
Finzi Friends Vice-President Philip Brunelle has been posting short programmes on the VocalEssence website, highlighting the music of a composer that has been associated with VocalEssence. He recently featured Finzi and you can listen to the programme here: https://www.vocalessence.org/category/musical-moments/
The Amstrong Gibbs Society, which was founded in 2003 to promote understanding and performance of the composer’s work, has a new website. You can find information about the life and works of Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, as well as reviews and recordings.
The new site is available via this link: www.armstronggibbs.com
Recent Finzi performances on video
Finzi Friend and scholar Zen Kuriyama recently conducted his final PhD recital, which included Finzi’s Farewell to Arms as well as the Prelude for String Orchestra. You can watch the performance by clicking on the orange links and read Ken’s comments below on what inspired him to programme these works.
At the Bodleian I was able to view, study, and photograph the original manuscript which Finzi himself used to conduct [Farewell to Arms]. Of considerable importance to me were the conducting beat patterns Finzi wrote for the several tricky metre changes in the recitative. As a conductor, it is of the greatest value to conduct a piece of music with the same precision and beat patterns as the composer. I will also be conducting Finzi’s Prelude for String Orchestra in F minor, op. 25, pairing it with Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater for SAT choir and strings. The harmonic language, melodic motifs, and texture of Finzi and Pärt are astoundingly similar, and, to my knowledge, parallels have never been drawn between the two composers. Pärt, the Estonian composer who hearkened back to early Orthodox compositions and ‘invented’ the compositional device Tintinnabuli, created a musical language by revitalizing another, just as Finzi did.