Finzi, Gerald - Intimation of Immortality - Best, Matthew

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This album brings together two of Finzi's most characteristic works. Dies natalis, a setting of prose and verse by the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne, is a piece of sublime concord and timelessness, music which vividly suggests the vision of a child's innocence and unsullied perception of the world which lies at the heart of Traherne's philosophy. Intimations of Immortality is by contrast a lament for the lost joys of Traherne's idealized childhood. Finzi uses Wordsworth's famous ode to convey his view that 'a dead poet lives in many a live stockbroker' and the result is a work of arresting beauty.