Gerald Finzi - Introit for Solo Violin & Small Orchestra - Op. 6 (Molto Sereno)

A transcendent work by English composer Gerald Finzi. For me, unforgettable, and a landmark in my appreciation of the English pastoral idiom.

My earlier upload of this work (Boult, LPO, Friend) was ordered to be taken down by Nimbus/Lyrita records (having been up for nearly five years and got almost 40,000 views). We have lost, too, all the hundreds of wonderful comments. I regret that the most, for they were deeply felt and irreplaceable. A loss to all lovers of Finzi's music.

Here is the equally winning Northern Sinfonia/Griffiths/Hatfield performance on Naxos. I reconstructed the original sequence of photographs (I am afraid that both equipment and technique in my early YouTube days weren't terribly fine, even to be kind to myself! So I apologise for that).

I don't think I can do better than quote Rob Barnett from Musicweb on this piece:

"The earnest sweetness of Introit for solo violin and small orchestra is touching, elegiac, fragile and plaintive -- a most beautiful piece. The Introit ... makes me lament the ruthless decision to drop the flanking movements which made up the Finzi violin concerto. I wonder if the work can ever be reconstructed? As it is the Introit is every bit the equal of Eclogue (a piece well exposed on British Classic FM). It is a work of the most haunting and evanescent intensity, heartbreaking in that passage in which the violin plays in its highest register. It is in some ways a scion of Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending and is every bit the equal of that work. Lesley Hatfield plays it with poise, security and serenity."

A recent, most moving comment by YouTuber Wolfy O'Hare on Finzi's Eclogue:    • Gerald Finzi - Eclogue for Piano and ...  
could equally well pertain to this piece too:

"Tender, rapt and bitter-sweet harmonies which seem to reach back into one's personal past with ease and profound sincerity; music so in sympathy with private thoughts that from the outset, it gently mists the eyes and unlocks years of quietly folded feeling."

For myself too, this music strikes like an emotional thunderbolt.

I took these images of parts of England's Peak District in Derbyshire at Christmas 2008.


Northern Sinfonia
Violin: Lesley Hatfield
Conductor: Howard Griffiths
Naxos Label
NAXOS 8.553566