Love's Labour's Lost

Finzi’s music for Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost, one of his least-known works that deserves wider performance, was created soon after the end of World War II and represented something of a compositional watershed. Writing short items to the tight three-week deadline of a broadcast proved to be a liberating experience for a composer so used to revisiting and refining works over decades: the theatrical fluency Finzi discovered was an important ingredient in the confident burst of works of his last years. The songs contained within the incidental music are ideal fare for summer music festivals or concerts with a Shakespearean theme.