Herbert Howells is a marvelous, still-too-little-known composer, neglected essentially because he didn’t write many large orchestral works in traditional forms. Imagine, then the excitement of finding an early, unperformed concerto nearly 40 minutes long! The enthusiastic notes to this recording contend that a lack of a few final bars (provided here by John Rutter) has prevented the work from being played to date, but this isn’t really true. Howells had ample opportunity during his long life to put the piece into performable shape, had he felt the need. Evidently he didn’t, and he was right. Clearly an apprentice effort, this ungainly, thickly scored, clumsily written concerto consists entirely of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The orchestra heaves, the piano tosses off torrents of notes, especially in the first movement, but there’s no direction to the discourse, no reason why anything happens the way it does. Any piece that consists entirely of effects without causes ultimately becomes boring, and there are yawns aplenty here.
Turn to the Second Concerto, and we’re in a different world. Its bright, percussive solo writing belies the composer’s reputation as a musical “softee”, and the music’s tight structure and more appealingly dissonant harmonic idiom bring to mind a sort of English Bartók or Prokofiev. It’s a delight. Howard Shelley plays both works very well, though he’s not better in the Second Concerto than Katherine Stott on Hyperion, where you get a first rate coupling in the form of the Concerto for String Orchestra.
The most fascinating piece on this disc is Penguinski, a four-minute-long, affectionate parody of early Stravinsky and the musical idiom of the Ballets Russes. Try out this brilliant little sucker on your friends and dare them to guess the composer! Obviously anyone collecting Chandos’ ongoing Howells cycle will want this disc, and I’m happy to have it as well. And if the First Concerto won’t do anything to enhance its composer’s reputation, it probably won’t hurt it either. Recommended for the good bits, which are very good indeed, and quite well recorded. [3/27/2001]
