Review of Gerald Finzi's Intimations of Immortality
and Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony

"Spirited Adventure on a Spring Outing"

The Guinness Choir
National Concert Hall

By programming Gerald Finzi's Intimations of Immortality and Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony, the Guinness Choir showed spirited adventure for their spring outing at the National Concert Hall.

Both works are settings of English verse. Finzi took extracts from Wordsworth's Recollections of Childhood while Britten's 14 poets read like a "Golden Treasury". Considered his masterpiece, Finzi's Intimations is beautifully scored with music following a line from Elgar through Holst to Walton. His writing can be solemnly reflective and joyously chirpy, with elements of pastoral and pageant.

Britten's Spring Symphony is more extrovert, but, like the Finzi, has its longueurs. Deftly scored, it has remarkable originality not least in the vibrant string support of the tenor's Waters Above (Vaughan) and the brass and percussion in the alto's Out on the Lawn I Lie in Bed (Auden).

If the Finzi seems to enjoy the safer performance under David Milne, its demands are less fastidious. The Britten needs a tighter rein to ensure its myriad detail is crystal clear - not by any means a simple task. The Guinness voices are never less than stalwart in both pieces, while the boys of the Palestrina Choir, essential to the Britten, are nonetheless swamped in their important finale Sumer Is A Icomin In as the larger group's vocals swayed ecstatically.

The lion's share of the solos goes to tenor Martyn Hill, whose response was delicately and positively expressive. Alto Emma Selway was against the somewhat edgy soprano Charlotte Ellett.

PAT O'KELLY
14th April 2008

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Review of Gerald Finzi's Intimations of Immortality and Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony

"Spirited Adventure on a Spring Outing"

Review of Gerald Finzi's Intimations of Immortality
and Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony