Howells was notoriously sensitive to criticism, often withdrawing a work from circulation if it received an adverse review.
Compositional Technique
Howells designed his Piano Concerto No 2 with a very unusual structure, organizing the three movements as a huge sonata-form where the first movement acts as exposition, the slow movement as development, and the last as a modified recapitulation.
Composition History
The negative reception of his Piano Concerto No 2 caused Howells to withdraw the work and virtually stop composing for about ten years, only writing small-scale pieces.
Critical Reception
The 1925 premiere of Howells's Piano Concerto No 2 was a disaster, with a critic noting angry shouts of disapproval from one gentleman in the audience.
Composition History
The Three Dances for violin and orchestra were written in 1915 for George Whittaker, a highly gifted fellow-student violinist who had entered the Royal College of Music at age eleven.
Composer Biography
Herbert Howells was considered the most brilliant student of his generation at the Royal College of Music, with his composition teacher, Sir Charles Stanford, calling him his 'son in music'.
Composition History
Howells's Concerto for string orchestra was completed in 1938, partly as a means of purging the ghost of his son, who had died of polio at age nine in 1935.
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