Matthew Best: Corydon Orchestra - Finzi: Intimations of Immortality & Dies natalis

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.