The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (196): By special request

Herbie G says:

Very welcome! Moeran’s music has enjoyed a revival on CD, with plenty of fine recordings. I have always had a soft spot for it. His life was dogged by misfortune; wounded in WWI, with shrapnel lodged in his brain, he suffered from personality disorders that led to a spell of alcoholism and abrasive behaviour giving rise to extreme embarrasment when he appeared in public. Much of music is suffused with nostalgia and melancholy. Late in life, he married Piers Coetmore, a cellist, but his marriage was probably not consummated and they never lived together as man and wife; while she was touring the world giving concerts, he was wandering around with no permanent home. He was finally shacked up in an abandoned air-raid shelter in Kenmare, Ireland, where he was found one morning face-down in a river; the post-mortem showed that he wasn’t drunk at the time he died but the probability was that the shrapnel in his brain had become dislodged and precipitated a severe brain haemorrhage. He was only 56 years old.

Moeran, virtually an eccentric vagrant lacking self-confidence, couldn’t ingratiate himself with the movers and shakers in the musical fraternity so never achieved the recognition he deserved. It may be that his estrangement from society engendered the heartache so often encountered in his music.
Try his Cello Concerto, written for his wife, who recorded it for Lyrita long after his death. Her technique is, not to put too fine a fine point to it, not of the best, but the pathos in the first two movements and the forced jollity of the folksong-inflected finale are well to the fore.