On today’s date in 1956, the English composer Gerald Finzi died in Oxford at 55. Finzi suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and shortly before his death had caught chickenpox from some children he had visited, an infection that proved fatal.

Finzi was born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His mother was musical, and an amateur composer. Even with talent, wealth, support from the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and several golden opportunities for career advancement, Finzi proved to be a rather diffident soul who seemed to prefer to work in seclusion and relative obscurity.

He collected rare books and scores by 18th century English composers but is most famous for his settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, a contemporary of his parent’s generation.

Himself an agnostic, Finzi produced a small body of sacred choral works, as well as two instrumental pieces that have endeared him to clarinetists: a set of clarinet Bagatelles from 1943 and this Clarinet Concerto from 1949.

British critic Norman Lebrecht offers this assessment of Finzi’s appeal: “a confluence of Elgar without bluffness and Vaughan Williams at his most delicate. His concerto for clarinet and strings is a light and lovely lament for lost times.”

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Clarinet Concerto; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Guildhall String Ensemble; Robert Slater, conductor; BMG 60437