Gerald Finzi: Fear No More the Heat of the Sun

Time for some English art song, alebit with a Welsh singer, and a title appropriate for this heatwave.

Fear No More the Heat of the Sun comes from Shakespeare's Cymbeline and, like a lot of good poems, is about death.

The couplet:

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Encapsulates the whole of Housman's verse centuries before he was born.

I sometimes suspect Bryn Terfel of overacting in this sort of work, but his voice is simply magnificent.