Just as our Bicentennial focused attention on American composers, the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebration in England this past year provided an occasion for the rest of the world to sample the works of British composers whose names may be familiar, but whose music is not. One such individual is Herbert Howells (b.1892), who is best known in England for his liturgical music and his lyrical orchestral miniatures. Examples of both genres are now available here, with the first volume of Michael Nicholas's complete set of organ music recordings appearing on Vista (VPS 1031), and HNH providing a collection of three small-scale works, including the puckish, folk song-inspired Merry Eye, played to perfection by Sir Adrian Boult and the New Philharmonia Orchestra (4005).

The powerful effects of the folk song genre are also evident in the works of E. J. Moeran (1894—1950), an individual who, though his catalogue is dotted with large-scale compositions, was, like Howells, primarily a miniaturist. Such influences and characteristics are readily apparent in his Symphony in G Minor (1937), a melodious work that favors the delineation of smaller musical ideas over the development of a symphonic-like cohesiveness. Conductor Boult gives the piece a strong sense of dynamic shape and elicits a convincing performance from the New Philharmonia Orchestra of London (H, NH 4014).

Orchestral miniatures by Sir Arnold Bax (1883—1953) turn up now and again in the United States, but as his seven symphonies seldom receive much attention here, either in concert or on recordings, Raymond Leppard's issue of the Symphony No.7 with the London Philharmonic is a treat (HNH 4010). The Seventh is dedicated "To the People of America" and was premiered at the New York World's Fair of 1939, though its influences and sympathies are anything but American. Opening with a Sibelian seascape, and closing with an English pastoral melody, the Seventh has breadth, beauty, and poetic imagination.