<<  -- 5 --  Adrian Williams    JOHN RUSSELL FRCM (1916-1990)

The Finzi connection found its way into my own life, first through Lizbie Browne, that most gorgeous of gorgeous songs from Earth and Air and Rain, in which I accompanied Adrian Clarke at an audition for the late Sir Giles Isham at Lamport Hall. The newness and freshness of that song and its artlessly natural word-setting was totally burned into my musical personality that day in 1975; also recalling misty-blue Northamptonshire countryside.

My first meeting with Joy Finzi was in the late seventies when I visited her in rural Berkshire with a friend who was doing his GRSM thesis on Finzi. Then later on I joined the Finzi Trust. Through this, connections between the Russells and Finzis were re-established, though in a modest way. At about this time another friend, violinist and entrepreneur Paul Gray, established the Southern Pro Arte, the orchestra to which Joy Finzi gave her blessing as successor to the then disbanded Newbury String Players, and which had its inaugural concert at the Reading Hexagon in 1981. The late Marcus Dods was their principal conductor.

There was one memorable SPA concert in Newbury Parish Church on 3 October 1981 which included the 'antiquated' (Gerald Finzi's own description) Romance for strings, which is dedicated to John Russell and which was included in the concert especially for John. At the request of Joy Finzi Farewell to Arms was sung by Julian Pike. John was present and wrote to me after the concert, which had included a little work by me:

Adrian, my dear boy! It was only when I got home on Saturday that I realised that you had got to where you wanted, and where you ought to be -- for a part of your life at any rate -- in the Finzi-Newbury-Russell ambience, and I had a little weep. What better 'visiting card' than your splendid music (Do you ever cross ANYTHING out, or do you let it EASE itself onto paper, as did Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorák and (most of the time) Britten?) Gerald's restless soul must have been singing with joy somewhere.

In March the following year, 1982, John reported with delight in a letter that

Joy Finzi has made me a vice-president of the new Finzi Trust, which cheers me after all these years (along with D McVeagh, J C Case, H Ferguson et al) - a position made more visible in August at the Three choirs Festival in Hereford at which the Finzi Trust held its first Three Choirs lunch in a marquee near the cathedral. (Intimations of Immortality was performed at the Three Choirs that year if I remember correctly) John and Margaret were both present, and, ever a willing slave, I was commandeered to slice cheese for the buffet. John a few days later: Strange Finzi gathering! I seemed to be without doubt the only Elder Statesman present, except for Diana [McVeagh]. The Three Choirs that year was an appropriate prelude to my move from Surrey to the glorious Welsh marches the following month.

Indeed, continuing on from there, it was a fitting honour to have the financial support of the Trust towards a recital at the first Presteigne Festival in 1983 when I accompanied Brian Rayner Cook in Let Us Garlands Bring.

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