Finnissy English Country-Tunes

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Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Howard Skempton, Judith Weir, Chris Newman

Label: NMC

Magazine Review Date: 12/1990

Media Format: Cassette

Media Runtime: 0

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: NMC002

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
Michael's Strathspey	Judith Weir, Composer Judith Weir, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
An mein Klavier	Judith Weir, Composer Judith Weir, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Even Tenor	Howard Skempton, Composer Howard Skempton, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Eirenicons I-IV	Howard Skempton, Composer Howard Skempton, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Stanley Stokes, East Street 1836	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Kemp's Morris	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Autumnall	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Freightrain Bruise	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Short but ...	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Reels	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
(Le) repos sur le lit	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
News of my own	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Grooving through old tombs	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano

Composer or Director: Michael (Peter) Finnissy

Label: Etcetera

Magazine Review Date: 12/1990

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 53

Mastering:

ADD

Catalogue Number: KTC1091

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
English Country-Tunes	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano

Composer or Director: Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Howard Skempton, Judith Weir, Chris Newman

Label: NMC

Magazine Review Date: 12/1990

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 60

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: NMCD002

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
Michael's Strathspey	Judith Weir, Composer Judith Weir, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
An mein Klavier	Judith Weir, Composer Judith Weir, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Even Tenor	Howard Skempton, Composer Howard Skempton, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Eirenicons I-IV	Howard Skempton, Composer Howard Skempton, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Stanley Stokes, East Street 1836	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Kemp's Morris	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Autumnall	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Freightrain Bruise	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Short but ...	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Reels	Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael (Peter) Finnissy, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
(Le) repos sur le lit	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
News of my own	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano
Grooving through old tombs	Chris Newman, Composer Chris Newman, Composer Michael Finnissy, Piano

Author: Arnold Whittall

Michael Finnissy's music is intricate in texture, but strongly built on the basis of clearly perceptible and well-proportioned contrasts between the aggressive and the restrained. English Country-Tunes was composed in 1977, when Finnissy was 31, and its style may strike listeners weaned on Xenakis, or the earlier Boulez and Stockhausen, as conforming almost too uncritically to the expressionistic precepts of these masters. Anyone anticipating Graingerish essays in flamboyant folkishness will soon realize that they have been led up the garden path but, with luck, they won't mind too much. The tunes identified by Finnissy's titles—''Green meadows'', ''The seeds of love'', and so on—might ultimately be revealed if every one of the layers of transformation were stripped away. But there remains a certain Satie-esque spirit in the association of such evocative labels with such uncompromising music.
Beneath its modernist surface Finnissy's piano writing has a Lisztian range, alternating bell-like meditations with virtuosic outbursts: as it happens, he studied with, among others, the Liszt expert Humphrey Searle. Weighing in at a continuous 53 minutes, English Country-Tunes is ambitious and exciting, while betraying a degree of compositional inexperience (or willfulness) in establishing so quickly its essential strategy of contrasts between 'thick' and 'thin' musics. In the later stages Finnissy at last allows a more sustained and extreme opposition between an almost idealized quasi-nostalgia and an alarmingly protracted assault on the opposite ends of the all-accepting piano. Finnissy is an ideal advocate of his own music, making it plain that its technical demands are not ends in themselves but the only means whereby so powerful an expressive display can convincingly be mounted; and he has the advantage of good sound, taken from a BBC recording of 1986.
On the NMC disc, Finnissy sets his own work as a frame around the very different concerns of three other British composers, Chris Newman, Howard Skempton and Judith Weir. Whatever Skempton may be, he is no expressionist, with a gentle, by no means unvaried and far from uniformly consonant style that is simple in technique but never superficial in manner. Eirenicon means ''step promoting peace'', and Skempton's music exemplifies the uncomplacent spirit of non-violence.
Newman's music is also simple in the strictly technical sense: a wild glissando apart, he tends to write as few notes as possible. But his 'steps' promote more disturbed emotions than Skempton's. There is a sense of menace, of a logic trying to escape from its own increasing restrictions and becoming anarchic in the process, that is strongly conveyed by Finnissy's scrupulously graded playing.
Judith Weir's compositions have what many listeners will sense as a more traditional balance between directness and elaboration than the rest of the music on this disc. Where Finnissy's pieces tend to sprawl, Weir's are pithy, sometimes skirting blandness but blessedly precise in design and bursting with imaginative ideas. Finnissy's own music is most arresting when least committed to avant-garde routines: the clipped, jazzy premises of Freightrain Bruise, the initial rhythmic sprightliness of Kemp's Morris. His playing is remarkable at both extremes—sustained, singing softness and ferocious yet well-stratified thumping. On this disc, too, the instrument is well recorded. But I have a minor concluding moan. Why does neither insert repeat the contents' list given on the back of the relevant jewel-box?'

Michael Finnissy plays Weir, Finnissy, Newman and Skempton

Michael's Strathspey

An mein Klavier

Even Tenor

Eirenicons I-IV

Stanley Stokes, East Street 1836

Kemp's Morris

Autumnall

Freightrain Bruise

Short but ...

Reels

(Le) repos sur le lit

News of my own

Grooving through old tombs