Paul Spicer conducts Finzi and Bairstow

Paul Spicer, founder of the Finzi Singers and a great champion of the composer’s music, guest-conducts the BBC Singers. The concert places four of Finzi’s most enduring settings of some magnificent English poetry alongside Edward Bairstow’s masterpiece Let all mortal flesh and To Daffodils by Ernest Farrar (killed in 1918 after just two days on the Western Front and whose death greatly affected the teenage Finzi). It’s a programme of very English music that perfectly introduces the performance of Finzi’s Cello Concerto later in the evening.