On track: A celebration of the organ's thunder and fury

At last the long-overdue recognition of works by a worthwhile English composer

Auckland composer Dorothea Franchi had many tales to tell of English composer Herbert Howells as she was his pupil in the 1940s. Just imagine the coming together of this most English of gentlemen and such a Kiwi pragmatist.

Music by Howells (1892-1983) has struggled to gain a mainstream audience and there was a time when hard-core devotees treasured an early LP of his Hymnus Paradisi, a score that Dorothea admired greatly.

A wider span of music is now available, including a handsome set of his songs with another New Zealand connection - one of the singers is New Zealand soprano Catherine Pierard.

New Zealand's Atoll label has just added to the storehouse. Robert Costin's recital of Howell's organ music, played on the Dunedin Town Hall organ, is an eminently satisfying venture. Resist if you can the defiant, brooding textures of the opening Rhapsody in E flat minor, captured by producer Wayne Laird with almost alarming immediacy.

These eight minutes remind you that this splendid organ is a star too, already immortalised in Kemp English's two Stormin' Norma discs.

The other short piece, an Intrata, also from the 1940s, sets off in gentler mode, weaving delicate textures with Costin's well-judged registrations and keen articulation, until it, too, erupts in a fury.

But the really monumental pieces here are the Second Organ Sonata of 1934 and the Partita of 1971.

The first movement of the sonata is a real thunderer, yet the second movement looks to the pastoral simplicity of the English folksong. Costin has the measure of both to perfection.

The Partita has political connections of a sort. When in Oxford, Howells promised fellow student Edward Heath that he would pen him an organ sonata should he ever become Prime Minister of England. When it came true in 1970, promises were kept and what was to be Howells' last major work was written.

Costin lays the five movements out skilfully, from what I hear as anger in the modernistic first to the translucently toned tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams in Sarabande for the 12th day of any October.

Don't wait two months to chase up this CD.

* Herbert Howells, Organ Music (Atoll ACD 606)