Herbert HOWELLS (1892-1983)
Hymnus Paradisi (1938) [46:42]
A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song (1933) [18:21]
Joan Rodgers (soprano); Anthony Rolfe-Johnson (tenor); Alan Opie (baritone)
BBC Symphony Chorus; BBC Symphony Orchestra/Richard Hickox
rec. 2-4, 7 November 1998, All Saints’ Church, Tooting, London. DDD
Original texts, French and German translations included
CHANDOS CHAN 10727X [65:12]
In my opinion Hymnus Paradisi ranks alongside The Dream of Gerontius
and Belshazzar’s Feast as the three most blazingly original of
English choral works - and not just of the twentieth century. Furthermore,
when it comes to eloquence of utterance I believe that only Gerontius
rivals it. I suspect I have in my collection nearly every recording that’s
been issued of this radiant masterpiece - with the exception of this Richard
Hickox version. Quite how I came to miss it I don’t know, especially
since the other piece on the disc, A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing
Song, is a great rarity and this is its first and, I believe, only recording.
So I jumped at the chance to review this disc on its reissue as part of the
Chandos series, The Hickox Legacy.
As I say, A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song, is a great rarity.
It was written as a wedding present for the baritone, Keith Falkner and his
bride, Christabel. However, Howells neither orchestrated the piece nor presented
it to the Falkners until a première was arranged in 1953 - imagine
having to wait twenty years for the delivery of a wedding gift! It’s
a rather unusual work in the Howells catalogue in that it is both secular
and extrovert. The work calls for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus
and orchestra. The texts are from the early sixteenth century and, essentially,
concern a young girl’s willingness to be wed and the amorous intentions
of a somewhat clumsy Kentish yeoman. I wouldn’t say it’s great
Howells but it’s very well worth hearing, not least because along with
other neglected works such as Sine nomine (1922) it fills out
our picture of the composer. The present performance is a rumbustious one.
Alan Opie, as the eponymous yeoman, is in tremendous form while Joan Rodgers
makes a winning impression as the would-be bride. The piece, which plays continuously,
is in four sections. I think the third section, which is the most extensive
and expansive, also contains the best music. Much of the section features
the baritone in an ardent solo, in which he’s supported by the choir.
Opie does this very well indeed. This is archetypal, chromatic Howells. This
colourful score gets a strong performance under the committed direction of
Richard Hickox. If, like me, you come new to the piece I hope you’ll
enjoy it as I did.
However, thoughA Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song is enjoyable
it doesn’t approach the stature of Hymnus Paradisi, surely Howells’
masterpiece. As is well known, he composed it in the wake of the sudden death
of his young son, Michael, to whose memory the score is inscribed. In writing
it he drew partially on material from his a cappella Requiem, a work
composed before Michael’s death and one which had not been published
or performed; indeed, the Requiem was to remain hidden from the public gaze
for even longer than Hymnus. Howells not only decided against releasing
Hymnus Paradisi for performance once he had finished it; he kept its
existence known only to a small circle of people. Eventually, thank goodness,
Vaughan Williams persuaded him to allow it to be performed at the 1950 Three
Choirs Festival in Gloucester.
It’s an extraordinary score. One thing that I find so remarkable about
it is that, though the work was born out of deep personal grief, there’s
so much ecstasy in the music. We are acutely aware of the composer’s
pain, not least in the first two movements, the orchestral ‘Preludio’
and ‘Requiem aeternam’. However, the first words that are set
in the last movement are “Holy is the true light, and passing wonderful”
and, in truth, so much of the music that has preceded this section is luminous
in nature that when this final movement is reached we feel we’ve arrived
emotionally and musically at the point at which Howells has been aiming since
the work began. In fact, I find it hard to think of a passage in English music
that is so suffused with a spirit of ecstasy and mounting exaltation as the
first six minutes or so of this last movement.
The work has been lucky in the recording studio and revisiting earlier recordings
in conjunction with this review has reminded me that all have their strengths:
there isn’t a dud among them. The pioneering recording, through which
I learned the work, was the EMI version led by Sir David Willcocks in 1970.
It still sounds very good today, not least for the wonderful performance by
Heather Harper, whose singing remains the benchmark in the work’s discography.
Vernon Handley’s 1991 recording, made in Liverpool for Hyperion, is
a splendid affair also. Handley conducts with spirit and authority and in
the spacious acoustic of the Philharmonic Hall the Hyperion engineers achieve
a good concert hall balance. This performance was good enough for Brian Wilson
to rate the download
versionas one of Hyperion’s top 30 offerings when they launched
their download service in December 2009. Since then we’ve had the excellent
Naxos version, which was issued in 2007 (review).
I rate all of these recordings highly and now, having heard it at last, I
regard this Hickox version equally highly.
Both soloists are excellent. Joan Rodgers produces consistently beautiful
tone; yes, she employs vibrato but not to an extent that bothered me. When
required she gives us some radiant quiet singing but she also delivers the
goods on the many occasions when Howells requires his soprano to soar to the
heights and crown the ensemble with sumptuous sustained top notes. I still
regard Heather Harper as the finest exponent of this role that I’ve
heard but Miss Rodgers is close to that level of accomplishment. The late
Anthony Rolfe-Johnson had sufficient vocal heft to encompass such roles as
Peter Grimes but his was an essentially mellifluous voice and it’s that
quality above all that one looks for inHymnus Paradisi. I had high
expectations of him in this role and he doesn’t disappoint. Both he
and Miss Rodgers produce some delightful and gently ecstatic singing in the
third movement, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. At the start of the
fifth movement, ‘I heard a voice from Heaven’ Rolfe-Johnson is
wonderfully eloquent, delivering his line with eloquence yet also with touching
simplicity. If I were being hyper-critical he doesn’t hit the top G
sharp quite cleanly at the start of his lovely third phrase ‘Even so
saith the Spirit’ but this is an isolated and very small blemish on
a beautifully judged overall performance.
The BBC Symphony Chorus sings very well indeed. The chorus parts are very
demanding, not least in terms of the complex chromatic passages in which the
score abounds. However, this choir is right on top of the music. I’m
a little surprised that no other recording has followed the example of Sir
David Willcocks in having a separate choir - in his case the choir of King’s
College, Cambridge - to form the semi chorus as the differentiated timbre
makes a difference. However, where Hickox scores is that when the chorus divides
into two choirs the left-right division between the two is quite clearly audible.
The playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra is excellent. The orchestration
is marvellous both in the many richly scored passages and also in the places
where Howells fines down the texture almost to nothing. The tonal resources
of the BBCSO are splendid throughout.
Controlling all these forces and inspiring them with his vision of the score
is Richard Hickox. He conducts superbly, releasing all the emotion and ecstasy
in the score yet keeping a firm grip on the proceedings at the same time.
I’ve always thought that large-scale choral works brought out the best
in him and this is one such instance. This is a very impressive achievement.
In passing, I’ve always been surprised that a few years earlier when
Chandos recorded the other two large scale choral works by Howells, the Stabat
Mater and the Missa Sabrinensis the projects were entrusted
to Gennady Rozhdestvensky. He made a fine job of both but one wonders what
Hickox would have made of those scores.
The recorded sound on each of the versions mentioned in this review is good
- and all the teams of engineers achieve excellent if different results. I
think, however, that the Chandos engineers do best of all. The sound on both
works is excellent and Hymnus Paradisi in particular benefits from
the presence and detail that are such hallmarks of Chandos recordings.
It’s very unusual to find anything amiss with Chandos documentation
but on this occasion a couple of points call for comment. Andrew Burn says
in his note that A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song was written “in
the early 1930s”. In fact the piece can be dated more precisely. Both
Christopher Palmer, in his book Herbert Howells: A Centenary Celebration
(1992) and Paul Spicer in his short but good 1998 biography of the composer,
state clearly that it was written in 1933. More regrettably, I guess that
Chandos has simply reprinted most of the original booklet text but surely
Anthony Rolfe-Johnson’s biography could have been altered to record
the fact that he died in 2010 and to avoid speaking of him in the present
tense. After all, the conductor’s biography has been worded to record
his equally regrettable passing.
This splendid recording of Hymnus Paradisi is a particularly appropriate
choice for inclusion in Chandos’ Hickox Legacy series.
John Quinn
A splendid recording of Hymnus Paradisi coupled with a Howells rarity
see also reviews of the original
release and this
release by Rob Barnett