Clavichord music played on the piano? Howells published these pieces as ''for clavichord or piano'', as it happens, but I wonder whether they could ever sound better on the older instrument than they do here. As John McCabe quite eloquently demonstrates, they often respond to a quite un-clavichord-like robustness of tone, and anyhow, what effect would the clavichord's most characteristic timbre, the finger-vibrato or Bebung, have on Howells's adventurously wayward harmonies? No, Thurston Dart, the dedicatee of one of the most searching pieces in Book 1 of Howells' Clavichord, had it just about right when he wrote to the composer ''the pieces sound at least as good on the pfte.(!!)''.
Enough of finicking. Thirty-two shortish clavichord pieces, whatever they're played on, ought to be much too much of a good thing at a single sitting. I have to report, though, that I wolfed them down and was disappointed at the end that there weren't more of them. They quite delightfully mingle delicate pastiche, pure Howells and at times touching, at times witty homages ''to my friends pictured (or at all events affectionately saluted) within''. The pastiche and the pure Howells are sometimes singularly difficult to disentangle (Howells always said that he was a Tudor composer born out of his time, ''straying about in this 20th century''), and occasionally Howells and Giles Farnaby jointly merge into Faure or even Poulenc. Howells is at his Howells-est in, as you would expect, ''H. H. His Fancy'', a serious lyrical fugue with precisely judged but surprising harmonies; also in ''Lord Sandwich's Dreame'', Howells's lyricism at its purest, shaded with his characteristic reticent melancholy. Some of the homages are still more striking: the quietly grand, deeply felt ''Ralph's Pavane'', a lovingly grateful tribute to Vaughan Williams, or the moving ''Finzi's Rest'', written the day after Gerald Finzi died and having the skill and the modesty to mourn him with a melody that in its grace and serenity might be one of his own (though the harmonies again are Howells's own tributes). They are enchanting pieces, all of them... oh, I can't resist continuing the catalogue: ''Walton's Toye'', an adroit nudge at its dedicatee's 'Orb and Sceptre' manner; ''Julian's Dream'' (for Bream), subtly delicate lyricism with glinting harmonic clashes; ''Dyson's Delight'', lucid transparency and harmonic unpredictability in beautiful balance.
As you see, I could go on for pages. McCabe obviously loves these pieces dearly, and although he realizes that some of them (the eloquent ''Samuels' Air'', for example, or the grandly dignified ''De la Mare's Pavane'') invite quite big tone and expansive gesture he never overstates any of them. Both the instrument used (a less than full-sized grand piano) and the acoustic emphasize this: we might be in McCabe's own music-room as he, with a composer's as well as a pianist's pleasure in such things, invites us to join him in savouring the poise of a characteristic Howells melody, the subtle crunch of a Howells chord; and once or twice you can hear him echoing Patrick Hadley who, whenever he heard a particular Howells work would send him a postcard with the simple words ''Oh Herbert, that cadence!''. A lovely collection. Can I have it on my desert island, please?'