I'm just listening to some Howells - the elegy for viola and orchestra, played by Helen Callus and the NZ symphony.

I love it.  There's a particularly striking bit when the strings let rip about two and a half minutes in, and the rest is wonderful too!

Anyway, I realise I haven't listened to much Howells.  Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

Tommo

Among his Choral Music Here is the Little Door stands out. I've sung it times beyond count (and in various voices as well ). That's if you want to hear Christmas music in June....

There are numerous Psalm Preludes for Organ as well, I believe. I also played an organ piece just a few weeks back called Paean, the last of his Six Pieces for Organ. I obtained the copy from th'RCM Library. The last time it had been got out was 1982, and it didn't even have a bar code in it...

Requiem seconded - absolutely stunning, on the same Naxos disc Reiner mentions, IIRC. An essential purchase.

Inevitably he gets pushed into the corner where English church musicians have dwelt for the last hundred+ years, but I think he's much better than that; his contrapuntal and harmonic writing - whilst remaining in an essentially tonal context - is absolutely outrageous and often incredibly beautiful.

If Mr LeBreacht sincerely believes that he is even more ignorant and prejudiced than I thought.

I sometimes doubt whether he actually LIKES music.

I rather enjoyed the late Thea King playing his Clarinet Quintet today on Radio 3.

Missa Sabriensis is well worth a listen; it's not performed all that often, though. Much of Howells's work doesn't really grab me especially strongly, but that's a temperamental issue rather than implicit of any kind of value judgement. Of the egregious Mr Lebrecht's "assessment" (with the emphasis on the "ass"), I find myself able only to say that, whilst one might assume that it takes one cowpat to recognise another, it doesn't always follow that a cowpat can recognise anything at all, really; in all seriousness, if and to the extent that there has ever been such a thing as a readily identifiable "cowpat school" in England, Howells is by no means one of its more obvious class members but, frankly, I'm far from convinced that there was ever a whole lot more to the notion of an English "cowpat school" than that of a mere catchphrase, however neat and convenient it might seem to be - and, for what it's worth, one which I suspect the said Mr Lebrecht has doubtless wished that he had himself invented. Yes, if one were to try to pin that epithet on anyone at all, one could think of certain works of Gurney, Gibbs et al, but it has long since struck me that attempting to associate it with the best works of the likes of Vaughan Williams, Howells, etc. borders on the fatuous...

Best,

Alistair

I cannot recommend too highly the disc by which I first came to know Howells: wonderful performances by Adrian Boult of the orchestral pieces Merry-Eye, Corydon’s Dance and Scherzo in Arden. They have, to my ears anyway, a strangely elusive, elliptical quality which I find reminiscent of Debussy's "Jeux" - even though the two composers are quite dissimilar in other ways.

The CD (Lyrita SRCD 245) also includes the Elegy, and a substantial bonus in the form of all Butterworth's orchestral music, again in marvellous performances (and very good sound). Plus the delightful "One Morning in Spring" of Patrick Hadley.

I waited decades for these recordings to reappear in the CD format. All things come to he who waits - eventually 

Hard to top that one MJ... 

Which is the evening service with a lovely tenor solo in the Nunc? I suppose there are probably several but in one of them I've sung that tenor solo and at least for me though not necessarily for the listeners it was an immensely satisfying experience. As was A Spotless Rose for that matter. Like as the Hart is probably overexposed I guess but I still have a soft spot for it as the first example of that kind of modality I encountered from the inside...