Howells: Hymnus Paradisi

The performance is extremely successful, conveying the dynamism and energy very well...There have been a number of highly recommendable recordings of Hymnus Paradisi and there’s no doubt that... — MusicWeb International, January 2013 More…

Release Date: 2nd Jul 2012
Catalogue No: CHAN10727X
Label: Chandos
Series: Classics, The Hickox Legacy
Length: 65 minutes

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Work length46:48

Joan Rodgers (soprano), Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus
Richard Hickox

I. Preludio

Track length4:14

II. Requiem aeternam (Chorus, Soprano)

Track length9:47

III. The Lord is my Shepherd (Soprano, Tenor, Chorus)

Track length7:21

IV. Sanctus: I will lift up mine eyes (Chorus, Soprano, Tenor)

Track length10:44

V. I Heard a Voice from Heaven (Tenor, Chorus, Soprano)

Track length5:06

VI. Holy is the True Light (Chorus, Soprano, Tenor)

Track length9:36

Howells: A Kent Yeoman's Wooing Song

Work length18:21

Joan Rodgers (soprano), Alan Opie (baritone)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus
Richard Hickox

I. Lento

Track length2:17

II. Allegro vivo

Track length3:32

III. Meno mosso, con tenerezza

Track length7:04

IV. Allegro ritmico

Track length5:28

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Favourites, Gerald Finzi and Herbert Howells

David picks out some top recordings of two great twentieth-century English composers, Gerald Finzi and Herbert Howells.

This re-release of Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new commemorative Hickox Legacy series on Chandos Records, leading up to (and continuing beyond) the fifth anniversary, in Nov 2013, of the conductor's untimely death. The recording is released on the Classic Chandos label at Mid Price.

The reputation of Herbert Howells has reached new heights in recent years, no doubt helped by recordings such as this one of Hymnus Paradisi. Howells wrote the work in memory of his young son Michael who had died of polio at the age of nine. It is not a conventional requiem, in that it does not contain the whole text of the Requiem Mass. Instead it sets Psalms 23 and 121 with ‘I heard a voice from heaven’ and words from the Salisbury Diurnal, ‘Holy is the True Light’. It is an intense and powerfully emotional work – the composer’s attempt to come to terms with personal tragedy.

BBC Music Magazine wrote of Hickox’s performance of Hymnus Paradisi: ‘[He] brings passionate commitment to his performance and shapes Howells’s long lines lovingly. He is aided by the fine playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and sensitive choral singing.’

The secular cantata A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song was intended as a wedding present for the baritone Keith Falkner and his bride, Christabel – although they had to wait two decades for the work to be presented to them. ‘No two people ever received a more delayed wedding present’, Howells wrote to them, adding that it came ‘with apologies and affection’.

The Wooing Song features Howells in an unusually extrovert mood, in music set to texts dating from the 1600s. Words from Thomas Vautor’s sprightly madrigal Mother, I will have a husband (sung here by Joan Rodgers) provides the girl’s side of the story, while ‘I have House and Land in Kent’ (sung by Alan Opie), a text adapted from the composer Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata, gives the suitor’s perspective on courting.

Reviews

January 2013

The performance is extremely successful, conveying the dynamism and energy very well...There have been a number of highly recommendable recordings of Hymnus Paradisi and there’s no doubt that this one is prominent among them. Hickox’s years as a choral trainer held him in fine stead for those many undertakings on disc and with him he has a responsive BBC Symphony and Chorus to work with.

October 2014

Joan Rodgers and Anthony Rolfe Johnson take the lead, and Richard Hickox steers the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra through the work's emotional landscape.

Howells: Hymnus Paradisi

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Contents

Favourites, Gerald Finzi and Herbert Howells

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