Herbert Howells’ wrote a relatively small but important body of chamber music, mainly dating from his early maturity, circa 1916–1923, notably his Piano Quartet, the Rhapsodic Quintet for clarinet and strings, the Phantasy Quartet. His third string quartet In Gloucestershire was written in 1916 but has an extremely complex history.
The original score disappeared, Howells left it on a train, and he subsequently worked on the piece, recomposing from memory. Quite what relationship this work of the 1920s has to the original, we will never know. And in fact, no score of the work survives from the 1920s either, what we have is Howells’ published version from the 1930s. Yet with Howells, nothing was ever finished and it will come as no surprise to find that the published version (the one used on previous recordings of the work) has three movements that are different to the version from the 1920s!
Luckily, parts have survived, and a set of copyists parts from 1923 exists. These were used for a performance that may have been the one at the house of Marion Scott, a friend of both Howells and Ivor Gurney. These parts have now been edited by the academic, Dr Jonathan Clinch, and Joseph Spooner, cellist with the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet. The quartet has been playing the work and now they have released a disc, on SOMM records which pairs the 1923 version of Howell’s In Gloucestershire with String Quartet No. 6 by Charles Wood, Howells’ friend and teacher. Wood’s quartet, his last, dates from 1916, the year Howells first wrote In Gloucestershire.
On Monday, there was a launch event for the new SOMM disc, when the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet, ( violinists Madeleine Mitchell and Gordon MacKay, violist Bridget Carey and cellist Joseph Spooner) performed music from the disc, giving us a chance to hear two movements from Howells’ In Gloucestershire and the final movement from Woods’ String Quartet No. 6 along with one of Howells’ Three Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 28 arranged for string quartet by Madeleine Mitchell.
Full details from the SOMM website.
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