The current Classical Catalogue lists recordings of seven songs by Howells, and will shortly have to find room for 42 more. This is an important issue and, in all ways but one, every bit as delightful as important. That 'but one', however, had better be faced immediately. Fond as Howells undoubtedly was of churches, and skilled as he was in incorporating their acoustics into his writing for choir and organ, he presumably had other places in mind for his songs: a drawing-room most probably, or a small and relatively intimate concert-hall. These songs have all been recorded in a church, which would not matter if it did not sound like a church: but it very instantly and reverberantly does. In the quietest of the songs, such as Sweet Content, the effect is not unpleasant; in two of the FrenchChansons (''Sainte Catharine'' and ''Angele au couvent'') it is even appropriate; elsewhere it is a nuisance, rising through degrees of menace (in louder, more vigorous songs such as ''The Old Soldier'' and ''Flood'') to the status of ruiner and wrecker in most of those where the voice is the resonant baritone of Benjamin Luxon.
This is a thousand pities, for it prevents the wholehearted recommendation these discs would certainly otherwise have received. The songs are all worth knowing, and together they create a strong feeling for the composer's individuality. It is not so much the confirmation of impressions already established (the moments of ecstasy, the dreamy and melancholy moods, the feeling for a soaring vocal line, especially for the soprano): it is rather the affinity with certain poets, particularly De la Mare, with all that that tells, the purposeful, well-disciplined vigour and resourcefulness of much of the writing, and (what perhaps should not come as any surprise) the thoroughly pianistic character of the piano parts. Among the 'new' songs, the 11 from A Garland for De la Mare are probably most characteristic, but I loved In Green Ways, of which I had previously heard only ''Under the Greenwood Tree''; the long poem of James Stephens, ''The Goat Path'', is a marvellous setting, and so is the ''Wanderer's Night Song'', where the hilltops of Goethe's original take, musically, the shape of the Malverns.
Lynne Dawson, with something of Isobel Baillie in her tone, sings these beautifully, as she does the French songs. Catherine Pierard has a voice very apt for many, if a little less pure in the climax of Come sing and dance. John Mark Ainsley phrases with fine breadth, and lets his voice ring out exultantly when the occasion arises; and it is good to have Benjamin Luxon back, for there is no one like him for boldly catching at a song's character. Julian Drake plays admirably throughout, and Christopher Palmer's notes are first-hand and first-rate.'