HOWELLS Collegium Regale
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Herbert Howells, Owain Park
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 04/2016
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 61
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA68105
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Services, 'Collegium Regale' |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Stephen Layton, Conductor Trinity College Choir, Cambridge |
Psalm 122 |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Stephen Layton, Conductor Trinity College Choir, Cambridge |
I love all beauteous things |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Stephen Layton, Conductor Trinity College Choir, Cambridge |
Psalm 121 |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Stephen Layton, Conductor Trinity College Choir, Cambridge |
Behold, O God Our Defender |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Stephen Layton, Conductor Trinity College Choir, Cambridge |
(3) Rhapsodies, Movement: No 1 |
Herbert Howells, Composer
Herbert Howells, Composer Owain Park, Composer |
Author: Jeremy Dibble
This is a stunning recording in so many respects. Attention to dynamic detail, especially the hushed quality of the Magnificat, brings out the ethereal, not to say numinous character of this highly original miniature, imbued as it is with a whiff of French Impressionism. The splendid recorded sound also allows us to hear the fuller role of the tenor soloist in the Nunc dimittis, close surely to what Howells intended as Simeon’s song of joy, yet shot through with a typically English introspective melancholy. The darker, modal hues of the Te Deum and Jubilate benefit from the lavish role of the Coventry Cathedral organ, especially at points of climax (with which both movements abound), while moments of more characteristic Anglican prayerfulness are shaped by Layton and the Trinity choir with true, intimate poetry. I think particularly of the Te Deum’s magnificent lyrical closing bars – ‘O Lord, save thy people’ – with its reference to plainsong and the contrapuntal intricacy of the ruminative coda ‘Vouchsafe, O Lord’, both of which contrast with the sublime cri de coeur of ‘Let me never be confounded’. It is good, too, to hear the more sinewy Communion Service for King’s, written almost a decade later, juxtaposed with the more fulsome post-Romantic canticles, whose material is reworked with intriguing, cyclic ingenuity.
The other two anthems on this recording, Behold, O God our defender, written for the 1953 Coronation, and the setting of Robert Bridges’s ‘I love all beauteous things’ of 1977, are magical gems, sung here with tender care. And for all those devoted to art of Howells, the early psalm chants and the slightly more mature Rhapsody in D flat of 1917 (a little redolent of Parry perhaps?) provide a window into the world of the composer’s apprenticeship in the organ loft.
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