I have just edited David Truslove’s review for www.classicalsource.com of this new release. Unfortunately publication is delayed due to Classical Source undergoing intricate technical work, so I thought I’d put a few words here regarding this important issue, only the second of ‘Mass of the Severn’ (1954) and, in some respects, it’s a first, for David Hill uses a cleaned-up score to reveal the long-lived Howells’s personal invention (if sharing with fellow Englishmen, such as Vaughan Williams and Walton) afresh – Rozhdestvensky for Chandos didn’t have that luxury – inspiring the Bach Choir (the chorus has complex and technically challenging writing to negotiate), four excellent vocal soloists, and BBC Concert Orchestra to great things.
Truslove gives five stars to this Hyperion release, rightly so, for even if (to my mind) Missa Sabrinensis is uneven and too long (sixty-seven minutes on this occasion) there are numerous glorious moments, and the beauty of a recording is that one can return to it as often as desired to hopefully discover more about something that may seem somewhat intractable at first. First-class sound & presentation on CDA68294.