George MacDonald, a Canadian who has made his home in England, holds the principal clarinet chair in the orchestra which he partners on the record, the Northern Sinfonia. He proves himself an excellent soloist, with total technical fluency, and the ability to shape a lyrical line (plenty of those in the Finzi!) so as to warm the heart. With a background of affection for jazz, and of familiarity with Latin-American music in its homeland, he is also pretty ideally placed to understand what the Copland Concerto is about: this, too, he plays beautifully. In both these enterprises, as well as in the Pied Piper fill-up, the orchestra, in the hands of Steuart Bedford, is a splendid partner. In the upshot, given also its excellent quality of recorded sound, the new disc is one to be treasured.
Or perhaps it would be strictly truer to say that the LP would certainly be one to be treasured, if only it were not for the misfortune that in the case of both concertos there is the strongest competition from all the alternatives listed above. Perhaps a happier way of putting it would be to say that with so many versions of the first class available you cannot go far wrong if you choose between them by repertoire: for all are differently coupled. Indeed, if the two basic concertos coupled together is itself what you want, that you will find only with the new record: go out and buy it. You will also find a most agreeable fill-up in Walter Mourant's The Pied Piper: not ballet music to accompany the appropriate action, but a charming and beautifully scored light piece in its own right.
The alternative version of the Copland concerto is the CBS record made by Benny Goodman, with Copland himself conducting. As the piece was written especially for Goodman—who plays it marvellously—and as Copland is quite good enough as a conductor to get from the orchestra exactly what he wants, this has to be the definitive version. It is also very well and clearly recorded. The backing is more Copland, this time with the composer playing the solo part while Bernstein takes over the conducting: the somewhat brittle Piano Concerto. There is room for a fill-up: Copland's inescapable Fanfare for the common man.
The two alternative versions of the Finzi both illustrate very closely (as does the new record) the reserved, and entirely suitable, style of Frederick Thurston, to whom the concerto was originally dedicated. Understandably (she was both his pupil and his wife) Thea King comes closest to this of all with the splendid strings of the Philharmonia she plays the Concerto totally winningly on Hyperion. She backs the Finzi with a similarly definitive version (Thurston played the piece with its composer) of the most agreeable, but today little-known, Stanford Concerto. Without at all abandoning the lyrical (indeed adding a touch of wholly suitable vibrato on occasion), John Denman, with the New Philharmonia, also gives an excellent performance of the Finzi on Lyrita. Here the backing is more Finzi, in not quite such lyrical mood: the Grand Fantasia and Toccata, and the Eclogue, for piano and orchestra, with Peter Katin the hard-working soloist. The options are numerous and a decision will only be reached by a listener exercising his own choice of repertoire.'