Herbert Howells - Stabat Mater (David Hill)

Information

Composer: Herbert Howells

• (01) Stabat Mater
• (08) Te Deum
• (09) Sine nomine

Benjamin Hulett, tenor
Alison Hill, soprano

The Bach Choir
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
David Hill, conductor

Date: 2014
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573176

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Review

It is now 20 years since Howells’s substantial setting of the Stabat mater was recorded by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and the LSO on Chandos. A work deeply imbued by the composer’s grief at the loss of his son from polio, its first performance dates from 1965, 15 years after the premiere of its other cathartic counterpart, Hymnus Paradisi. Though there is much emotional turbulence in this music, Hill maintains a compelling life and forward momentum in Howells’s immensely contrapuntal score (it being three minutes shorter than Rozhdestvensky’s) and this interpretation also benefits from the serendipity of a vocal score with the composer’s tempo revisions which Hill chanced upon shortly before the recording was made. The Bach Choir has a palpable vibrancy in its range and layers of dynamics which are complemented by the extensive and highly sensitive palette of Howells’s orchestra (beautifully executed here by the Bournemouth SO) and the incisive solo tenor role of Benjamin Hulett. Particularly impressive are the opening movement, the procession-like ‘Cujus animam genentem’ and the powerfully climactic last two movements, ‘Fac ut portem’ and ‘Christe, cum sit hine exire’, true tours de force of balance and textural control.

Hill’s exhilarating affinity for this music is also evident in the orchestral, neo-Elizabethan fantasy Sine nomine of 1922 (written, I would argue, during Howells’s most fecund period), an example of impressionistic pastoralism at its most numinous, while the orchestration of the Te Deum, composed in 1944 for King’s College, Cambridge, transforms the familiar into something quite new. A stunning disc.

-- Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / RECORDING: ****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2014/Nov14/Howells_stabat_8573176.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/17/herbert-howells-stabat-mater-review-bach-choir-bournemouth-symphony
https://www.allmusic.com/album/howells-stabat-mater-te-deum-sine-nomine-mw0002707043

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Herbert Howells (17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983) was an English composer, organist, and teacher. Howells studied at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers included Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry and Charles Wood. In 1920 he joined the staff of the RCM, and remained there until 1979. From the late 1930s, after the death of his son because of polio, Howells turned increasingly to choral and organ music. Though not an orthodox Christian, Howells was chiefly identified with the composition of religious music. His most famous works includes Hymnus Paradisi, Stabat Mater and Requiem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Howells

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David Hill (born on 13 May 1957 in Carlisle, Cumberland, England) is an English conductor and organist. Renowned for his fine musicianship, Hill is widely respected as both a choral and orchestral conductor. He is the the 9th Musical Director of The BBC Singers (since 2007), and Musical Director of The Bach Choir (since 1998). Hill was also Associate Guest conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His more than 80 recordings, range from the Renaissance to the present day and including many award-winners, can be found on Decca/Argo, Hyperion, Naxos and Virgin Classics labels.
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Hill-David.htm

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