Howells: Rhapsodic Quintet for clarinet and string quartet, Op. 31

“Three precociously brilliant, warmly Romantic works from Howell's very early 20s. The vigorous, astonishingly assure Piano Quartet is outstanding - as are the performances in general. Beautifully-toned recordings.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 *****

Originally released in 1992, this is one of Metier’s most successful releases, and is re-issued by demand. The original Gramophone review was written by Michael Oliver. 'Herbert Howells wrote a brief note about his Piano Quartet, slightly defensively justifying his having written such an effusion of untroubled lyricism in 1916, when many of his contemporaries and friends were facing death (in the case of his closest friend, Ivor Gurney worse than death) in the battlefields of the First World War. He needn't have, of course: Gurney's talisman against total destruction by his experiences at the front was the thought of the landscapes that he and Howells loved, and it was one of those landscapes that Howells evoked in the Quartet, a hill just outside Gloucester, an image of the indestructible. And anyhow, is the piece really untroubled? I at least can hear in the finale a shadow of disquiet, even of a ghost walking on Chosen (or Chalkdown) Hill. But for the rest the abiding impression of the work is not of evanescent nature poetry, still less a redolence of cowpats, but a wonderfully sturdy and forthright lyricism. An 'early' work, the tunes are already Howells's own; so is the finely restrained depth of feeling. The slightly later Phantasy Quartet has rather more of elegy to it, in the solo lines at the beginning, which are recalled at the centre of the single movement and in the pensive coda. But again my notes are studded with synonyms for 'sturdy': 'stalwart' and 'robust' among them. A further development is heard in the immediately post-war Rhapsodic Quintet (again in a single movement). The lyricism here is more subdued, the energy more angular, as though Howells were deliberately taming the fecundity of his invention and making his ideas really work for their living; the variety of their development is all the more striking for this. The performances have just the qualities one hopes for: the sense of a group of young performers delightedly discovering that these neglected works are not in the least dusty or faded, but strong, urgent and brilliantly crafted is palpable throughout..'

'Easily the most important clarinet disc of the year' (Clarinet & Saxophone Journal)