Presto Recordings of the Year, Howells (composer)

The sound, engineered by Ralph Couzens, is magnificent...While fully relishing the at times dreamy polyphony of Vaughan Williams’s textures, Wilson’s Fantasia has sharp, impassioned edges too,... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2023, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Some may find the extensive spoken liturgy excessive but such is Simon Russell Beale’s compelling delivery that the sheer beauty of the words offers a musical diversion of a different kind.... — Gramophone Magazine, June 2019 More…

The combined forces certainly make a glorious noise, at its most impressive with the extensive Gloria section. — BBC Music Magazine, June 2020, 4 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 5 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Though there is much emotional turbulence in this music, Hill maintains a compelling life and forward momentum in Howells's immensely contrapuntal score...The Bach Choir has a palpable vibrancy... — Gramophone Magazine, November 2014 More…

I hadn’t expected Howells’s piano music to occupy such different sound-worlds to his better-known works, the spare Satie-esque whimsy of Harlequin Dreaming and the Debussy-ish Phantasy and Summer... — Katherine Cooper, Presto Music, July 2020 More…