Herbert Howells - Piano Music, Vol. 1 (Matthew Schellhorn)

Information

Composer: Herbert Howells

1. Phantasy
2. Harlequin Dreaming
3. My Lord Harewood's Galliard
4. Finzi: His Rest
5. Summer Idyls: I. Meadow-Rest
6. Summer Idyls: II. Summer-Song
7. Summer Idyls: III. June-Haze
8. Summer Idyls: IV. Down the Hills
9. Summer Idyls: V. Quiet Woods
10. Summer Idyls: VI. Near Midnight
11. Summer Idyls: VII. In the Morning
12. Siciliana
13. Pavane and Galliard: I. Pavane
14. Pavane and Galliard: II. Galliard
15. Petrus Suite: I. Finnicle's Scherzo
16. Petrus Suite: II. Gavotte
17. Petrus Suite: III. Vagrant Flute
18. Petrus Suite: IV. Minuet Sine Nomine
19. Petrus Suite: V. Bassoonic's Dance
20. Petrus Suite: VI. Odd's Minuet
21. Petrus Suite: VII. Toccatina

Matthew Schellhorn, piano

Date: 2020

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.571382

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Review

Every item on this absorbing collection of piano music by Herbert Howells is a first recording. There are plenty of captivating finds, too, not least the seven pieces that make up the 1911 Summer Idyls. These were part of a portfolio that helped secure the gifted teenager an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music (where he became a great favourite of Parry and Stanford). Matthew Schellhorn lends them immaculately stylish, raptly concentrated and memorably tender advocacy (‘June-Haze’ and ‘Down the Hills’ form a delectably limpid diptych in their own right), just as he is wholly attuned to the distinctly Ravelian soundscape of the exquisite 1917 Phantasy and endearing whimsy of Harlequin Dreaming from the following year (which annotator Jonathan Clinch surmises may well be a portrait of Howells’s dear friend, Arthur Bliss).

Pianist colleagues at the RCM (where Howells taught from 1920 until the late 1970s) were the lucky recipients of the Siciliana (1958), Pavane and Galliard (a powerful offering from 1964, exhibiting an especially penetrating harmonic scope) and Petrus Suite (1967-73). Disarmingly clean-cut and playful by turns, the last-named bears a dedication to Hilary Macnamara; thematic material from the concluding ‘Toccatina’ can be traced back to a sketch dated Easter Sunday 1921 (it also resurfaces in the Sonatina for piano of 1971). That just leaves the pithy My Lord Harewood’s Galliard from 1949 – all that survives of a wedding gift for the Earl of Harewood and his first wife, Marion Stein (a former pupil of Howells) – and the piercingly expressive Finzi: His Rest, one of two memorials to the composer written on the same day (the other, entitled ‘Finzi’s Rest: For Gerald on the Morrow of 27th September 1956’, found a home in the collection Howells’ Clavichord, published in 1961).

Boasting exemplary production values, this superbly performed survey constitutes a copiously rewarding voyage of discovery; in fact, I’m already itching to hear the second volume!

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/instrumental/howells-piano-music-vol-1

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Aug/Howells-piano-v1-8571382.htm

https://www.allmusic.com/album/howells-piano-music-vol-1-mw0003386703

https://www.naxos.com/Review/Detail/?catalogueid=8.571382&languageid=EN

https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Music-1-Matthew-Schellhorn/dp/B088N8X2VT

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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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Matthew Schellhorn (born 4 February 1977 in Doncaster, Yorkshire) is an English classical pianist. Following study in Manchester and Cambridge, with teachers including David Hartigan, Maria Curcio, Peter Hill and Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, his debut album of Messiaen chamber music received positive reviews and was awarded an AllMusic Classical Editors’ Favourite. A prominent performer of new music, Schellhorn has given over 140 premieres and has commissioned many solo and chamber works. He is a also passionate educator and gives regular masterclasses and workshops in the UK and abroad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Schellhorn

https://www.matthewschellhorn.com/

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