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Why no Zazzo?
I was delighted to see your feature on the brilliant countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński (March issue). I am a countertenor ‘nut’, and am old enough to have seen – live – every one of the singers you mention in the ‘Upwardly Mobile’ column. But, oh dear, how did you miss the wonderful American Lawrence Zazzo from your list? In my opinion, he is the leading dramatic countertenor of the 21st century. Also famous as a Handel scholar, he performs all over the world, has numerous recordings to his name, and is currently doing excellent work with students in the music department of Newcastle University.
Nell Gregory, Broadmayne
A Finzi appeal
Gerald Finzi came tantalisingly close to giving us a concerto for piano and strings. In the 1920s, he composed two movements of an intended three. By the 1950s – the decade of his untimely death – he was working towards a four-movement work and drafting outer movements to frame the existing two. Faced with a terminal diagnosis, he possibly despaired of completing the concerto. At any event, he elaborated one of the inner movements, the Grand Fantasia, and turned it into a free-standing work – the Grand Fantasia and Toccata which we know today. After his death, the other inner movement was published as the much-admired Eclogue. Some 40 years later, in 1994, an Oxford music undergraduate, Jonathan Cook, accessed Finzi’s manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and constructed his intended Rondo finale. Finding it mentioned in Stephen Banfield’s Gerald Finzi, An English Composer (1997) I set about trying to trace its author – the guardian of the only copy.
It was well worth the 25 years it took. We were able to muster the musical text for the whole concerto in its three-movement version: the original Grand Fantasia in the British Library, the Eclogue in print and the Rondo in our inky hands. The idea of ‘inky hands’ sums up the challenge the project faces. It is one thing to have the Fantasia in Finzi’s scrawl or the Rondo in Jonathan Cook’s comparatively legible draft; it is quite another to digitise it and furnish performers with crystal-clear parts. There could also be copyright issues to settle. The fact remains that Finzi’s earlier, shorter concerto is ready and waiting!
The later, longer concerto is more problematic. Its added movement, placed first of
