Howard Shelley, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Richard Hickox - Herbert Howells: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Penguinski (2000)

This wonderful CD is the product of the Chandos phenomenon; they find a neglected masterpiece that is unplayed and unknown, they record it brilliantly with a top class orchestra and conductor with soloists if appropriate and sell it to people like me, lovers of the English Musical Renaissance of the early part of the twentieth century. This CD contains well over an hour of the most tuneful and innovative music you can buy. The First Piano Concerto is a child of the end of worlds, 1914 and although an early product of the 22 year old composer, it is most mature and restrained in its handling of the romantic material. The dew of the spring morning in the English Countryside, the evening gloaming as quiet comes across the fields, it is all there...that Lost World of the English scene before cynicism and self-negation set in as a reaction to the Victorian Empire with all its contradictions and its destructive blowback. Nevertheless, as a rare unicultural being in this country, I appreciate the music of this time when people like Vaughan Williams, Howells, Cecil Sharp, Percy Grainger et al believed in the cultural richness of the English Folk idiom as a source for artistic expression. This contradicts our current masters who are attempting to sell us the myth that the English have no indigenous culture. This CD should answer their propagandising! If you like the VW of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and the Pastoral Symphony you will love this work. It is also a manifestation of the English love affair with the Piano Concerto. This is a longstanding thing that goes back to Howells and his contemporary Cyril Scott whose magnificent 1915 offering is still missing in the CD recordings we have available. John Ireland, Arnold Bax and Vaughan Williams continued this trend and during the 1940's people like Hubert Bath and John Addinsell put forward popular piano concerti that rescued the second rate films to which they were the soundtracks. The Second Howells Piano Concerto is more technically assured than the first, to be sure, it is less rambling in its developmental material but still contains those wonderful breathing folkish melodies against sad sinking harmonies that incorporate modal flavours that make the whole thing so, so...ENGLISH! If you like English Music or just the genre of the Piano Concerto, give these a try. I guarantee you will love them!