Customer Reviews

Howells: Orchestral Works

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This is a 2 CD set that combines Howell's previously released Chandos Orchestral Works Volume 1 and 2.
Which makes this an Ultimate Bargain.
Because this is the most Glorious and Beautiful English orchestral and String music this side of Vaughan-Williams.
The recording is Spectacular as is expected from Chandos.
I won't go into detail about the compositions or performance here. Instead go to the listings for the single CD editions where other reviewers have been more eloquent than I could ever be.
I do know what i hear though. This music is mostly Pastoral, Rapturous and Beautiful.
If you LOVE Vaughan-Williams, you will wonder why you've never given Howells a shot. Better late than never...Go Now and get this CD...

Here's a delightful mix of Herbert Howells' orchestral music, all of which was written before he turned his attention to the ecclesiastical works for which he is best known. Howells came from the same region that produced Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Parry, and his early compositions reflect the English countryside and folk music traditions just as theirs did. That Howells was profoundly influenced by Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, the premiere of which he attended in 1910, is very much in evidence here. Works such as "Paradise Rondel," a quasi-rhapsodic piece with a prominent part for piano, and "Pastoral Rhapsody," described by Lewis Foreman in his informative liner notes as a "glorious exercise in nature mysticism" could easily have been penned by Vaughan Williams. The same holds true for the early "Three B's" suite (1914), which includes one of the most beautiful movements in the English repertory, a masterpiece worthy of George Butterworth. From the same period came "Three Dances" for violin and orchestra, another lovely work in the pastoral tradition.

But all of that changed when the anguish over the death of Howells' son at the age of nine turned the composer in a very different musical direction. The results can be heard in the two selections for cello and orchestra, "Fantasia" and "Threnody" (1935-37) that were meant to be movements for a concerto that was never completed, and where light and joy have been replaced with Brahmsian weight and seriousness.

In that vocal music typically doesn't hold much interest for me, I'll not comment on the final work on this 2-cd set, "In Green Ways," a five movement suite for soprano and orchestra completed in 1928.

English music enthusiasts will find much to celebrate here. Four solid stars.