Herbert Howells - Missa Sabrinensis (David Hill)

Information

Composer: Herbert Howells

1. Missa Sabrinensis: 1. Kyrie 
2. Missa Sabrinensis: 2. Gloria 
3. Missa Sabrinensis: 3. Credo 
4. Missa Sabrinensis: 4. Sanctus 
5. Missa Sabrinensis: 5. Benedictus 
6. Missa Sabrinensis: 6. Agnus Dei 
7. All my hope on God is founded – Michael 'A Fanfare Setting'

Helena Dix, soprano

Christine Rice, mezzo-soprano

Benjamin Hulett, tenor

Roderick Williams, baritone

The Bach Choir

BBC Concert Orchestra

David Hill, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68294

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Review

‘Its proportions are modest in comparison with the Mass in B minor or the Missa solemnis’, wrote The Musical Times rather dismissively in 1954 of Herbert Howells’s latest work. The comment is also deeply misleading, because the Missa Sabrinensis is monumental, vast – a great wave of near-operatic emotion and intensity breaking over an intricate structural scaffolding.

Often closer to Verdi than Vaughan Williams, Howells’s Mass-setting goes further than even Hymnus Paradisi at full spate towards giving the lie to the casual dismissal of the composer as one of England’s pastoral also-rans. The scope of the piece and its layered, contrapuntal construction – more choral symphony than conventional Mass, as Jonathan Clinch’s illuminating booklet note points out – set it apart. Choral voices become a single strand, soloists another, in a densely woven texture in which the orchestra is less support than rival, sparring partner, urging on and amplifying.

Shaped in an arc, building up to the insistent collective cries of ‘Sanctus’ before falling away to a hazy-soft conclusion in the Agnus Dei, the Mass is an appealing mixture of baleful, modal Englishness and more perfumed Continental Impressionism. Solo lines rise up out of the choral body of the Kyrie like incense smoke, weaving and dissolving into one another. It’s a texture that returns, suddenly exposed, in the Benedictus, where solo soprano and a single flute pass phrases lazily to and fro – a moment of exquisite intimacy at the heart of a work that’s all about the collective, the massed.

While Hymnus Paradisi and the Requiem have been well served on disc, just a single account of the Severn Mass has existed until now. The 2005 Chandos recording by the LSO and Gennady Rozhdestvensky is lush but hazy, indistinct. Washes of sound and gesture catch the essence of the work but not its close-up detail – something we get here in a texturally high-definition performance from David Hill and the superbly trained amateurs of The Bach Choir.

Hill also has the edge with soloists. Bigger voices ride and soar over the chorus and BBC Concert Orchestra, led by Helena Dix’s ecstatic, rapturous soprano. Singing the music’s lines rather than its genre, she steers us firmly into the opera house, supported by Christine Rice in heady moments of duet, with tenor Benjamin Hulett and baritone Roderick Williams risking daring and heroic things below.

It’s an electrifying performance: one of those you never knew you were waiting for but can’t imagine now ever doing without.

-- Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/May/Howells_missa_sabrinensis_CDA68294.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/May/Howells_missa_sabrinensis_CDA68294_JQ.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/choral-song/howells-missa-sabrinensis-etc

https://www.operatoday.com/content/2020/05/herbert_howells.php

https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/howells-missa-sabrinensis-bbc-concert-orchestra-bach-choir-david-hill/

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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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