It is sad that Dorothy Howell’s music is so little known to the general musical public. And the lack of recordings and performances do not help to increase her standing. At present there is only one disc devoted to her music – the Chamber Music CD from Dutton Epoch. Even the Dorothy Howell Trust which is presumably charged with the preservation and promotion of her music does not appear to have a web site or an email address.Yet Howell was quite a prolific composer and went considerably beyond the chamber works so well explored on the CD. In fact there is a Piano Concerto, an orchestral tone poem Lamia, championed by Sir Henry Wood, a symphonic piece called Three Divertissements and a ballet Koong Shee (1923) I first came across her music many years ago when I found a copy of her piano Pieces For the Bairns. Strangely this is not easy or simple music and requires a sympathetic and mature technique to bring them off. The title is misleading.
I was recently listening to The Moorings, which surely must be one of Howell’s most attractive miniatures. The work was originally published by Augener in 1925 for ‘cello and piano although it was soon issued as an arrangement for violin and piano.
Celia Patterson, writing in the sleeve notes of the CD, suggests that much of the composer’s music was “inspired by nature and landscape” and felt that The Moorings was a good example of this art.
The piece is some five minutes long and has a sound-world not far removed from Cyril Scott or perhaps even Debussy. For all its ‘waterscape painting’ and musical description of the “gentle ebb and flow of the shallows” in the melodic and rhythmic devices she uses, this work is hardly a piece of salon music. The language is sophisticated, lyrical and surprisingly modern without nodding to any particular school of composition. It is a fine, short introduction to the music of this largely forgotten composer.
Jill Hopkins writing in the Worcestershire News states that “The Moorings, [is] the most beautiful composition [on this CD]. It is quiet and thoughtful, the violin pensive in its lower registers, and piano offering short rippling phrases.” The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music suggests that although “no strong personality emerges, she is a composer of distinct culture…” They consider that her Violin Sonata, the Phantasy and the Piano Studies are “well worth saving from virtual oblivion.”
I would suggest that if we could hear more of her music, her personality may well assert itself.
Listen to Lorraine McAslan and Sophia Rahman playing this work on Dutton Epoch CDLX 7144.
