The Mira Ensemble
Tom Edney director
SOMMCD 0725
A captivating and heart-easing disc. Partsongs have suffered a decline in fashion since the middle of the last century; so while Howells’ ecstatic liturgical settings continue to flourish, all but one of the brief works on this fascinating new issue are first recordings, likely to be unfamiliar to even the well-informed listener. Most of the poems are less obscure, and it is a pleasure to encounter the composer’s fastidious choices in new bottles.
His arching setting of Robert Greene’s Sweet Content presages A Hymn for Saint Cecilia by some thirty years. Along with Walter de la Mare’s delicate insights, other authors include William Blake (The Shepherd and Piping down the valleys wild); Thomas Dekker (two luscious versions of Golden Slumbers); two equally superb meditations to words by Thomas Campion, To music bent and Tune thy music to thy heart; and the traditional Sing Ivy, now better known through its entanglement with Scarborough Fair.
There are also a handful of rarer Christmas carols: a charming Spanish nativity scene, and a roistering advocation by George Wither which Howells set on Christmas Day 1957 (not the better-known Rocking Hymn, already enshrined by RVW) as might have been declaimed by the Ghost of Christmas Present. Perhaps the finest here is a variation of the words better known as King Jesus hath a garden, in which Howells salutes Debussy (via Holst) in gently rebounding four-part murmurations.
Howells’ ability to establish the essence of his settings at the outset is especially apparent in Sea Urchins (1935), a choral cycle of unison and two-part songs to words by Gladys Balcomb. On this showing, she was greatly influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, but she also prefigures the playfulness of Betjeman, who would surely have chortled at ‘In exactly half a jiff / I scramble up the cliff’, and relished her rendering of a train as a ‘sulphurated sneeze.’
These scenes of children’s holidays are preceded with an overture that recalls Howells’ Tudor-inspired clavichord pieces. On publication in January 1936, The Musical Times considered the cycle ‘diversified with the composer’s familiar deftness’, and indeed not a track passes on this disc without some charming felicitation of phrase or modulation, notably the deliciously bluesy postlude to Lindy’s Ballet Shoes, and the glowing suspensions and flexible lyricism of Piping down the valleys wild.
This is a most auspicious recording debut for the eight-strong Mira Ensemble, and a splendid showcase for their clear and well-tuned skills. Just occasionally I would have welcomed a little more clarity of diction. They are accompanied with finesse by Nick Salwey, and directed with understanding by Tom Edney, whose informative booklet essay is essential reading.
Review by Andrew Plant