Clarinet Concerto

The British composer Gerald Finzi was a perfectionist, completing relatively few large-scale works—meanwhile taking an active role in community musicmaking (and cultivating rare apple trees) in his rural hometown of Newbury. When the Three Choirs Festival approached him with a commission in the autumn of 1948, he initially planned only “a short concerto” for the clarinettist Pauline Juler, accompanied by string orchestra. But his inspiration took wing: the opening movement of the concerto that finally emerged in the summer of 1949 sets brisk, bracing writing for strings against the clarinet’s capacity for soaring, expressive song. The central “Adagio” is a different matter: the clarinet is free to sing and rhapsodise, while the strings etch a subtle, ever-shifting cloudscape that finally dissolves into a torrential downpour. Wistful fantasy jostles with boisterous fun in the third movement, and it all ends with a flourish.