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In a work intended to console, it's important that the actual sound the choir makes is warmly consoling. It certainly is in this new Trinity College recording of Howells's 1932 Requiem: the tonal blend drawn from the choir by conductor Stephen Layton, suffused by the acoustic of the Lady Chapel in Ely Cathedral, is glowing, and makes the opening 'Salvator mundi' a spiritually palliative...
The Choir of Trinity College, a group going back to the 14th century, brings a luminous, beautifully balanced sound to a range of music by Herbert Howells (1892-1983). The dynamics are carefully sculpted. Crescendos and even decrescendos thrill. This is approachable music - I picture it like a bright painting, with primary colours. Everyone will have their favorite parts. I love the dreamy fading...
My Best Choral CD is from Hyperion and showcases music by the still underrated Herbert howells. Stephen Layton and his Trinity College Choir, Cambridge do wonders with Howells brief but eloquent Requiem, the Hymn to St Cecilia and one of our finest hymn tunes composed for All My Hope on God is Founded and dedicated to his son who died very young.
Reviewed by David MellorThe Mail on Sunday
Der englische Komponist Herbert Howells (1892-1983) war eine überaus interessante Persönlichkeit in der englischen Musiklandschaft, dessen Œuvre hierzulande leider viel zu selten beachtet wird. vielleicht weil sein umfangreiches Schaffen im Bereich der anglikanischen Kirchenmusik naturgemäß außerhalb des Einflussgebiets der anglikanischen Kirche weniger Interesse weckt. Dass dies eine äußerst...
The death from polio in 1935 of Herbert Howells' nine-year-old son Michael left a permanent mark on his music. Howells' most famous work Hymnus Paradisi was a memorial to his son that had its musical roots in the unaccompanied Requiem that he composed in the early 1930s, but which was only published just before his death in 1983. The Requiem, with its rather plain settings of Psalms 23 and 121...
Herbert Howells' Requiem must be one of the most beautiful and searingly moving works in the entire English sacred musical canon. Written in the early 30s but not released until 1980, it is inextricably linked to untimely youthful death; Howells modelled it on Walford Davies' A Short Requiem of 1915, written in memory of those killed in the war. Later, he drew heavily from it for Hymnus Paradisi...