Evlyn Howard-Jones plays Bach Preludes & Fugues Nos. 10-17 BWV 855-862

The obscure British pianist Evlyn Howard-Jones (1877-1951) in eight Preludes and Fugues recorded in 1929-1930 as part of what was intended to be the first complete recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The Columbia label had recorded Harriet Cohen playing the first nine Preludes and Fugues on October 11-12, 1928, and then Howard-Jones recorded the next eight on February 19, 1930. It is believed that Harold Samuel was intended to record the remainder of Book 1, but the project folded when HMV merged with Columbia. It was only through prepaid subscriptions that HMV would be able to fund the premiere studio account of the Well-Tempered Clavier with Edwin Fischer in recordings made from 1933 to 1936.

These performances have to my knowledge received no LP transfer and it was only a single Biddulph CD released in 1995 (LHW 023, long out of print) in transfers by David Lennick that featured both Cohen's and Howard-Jones' landmark recordings. Previous uploads have only included Preludes and Fugues 10 through 16 as the online source for No.17 had some technical glitches, but I fortunately located a copy of the full set and am therefore making Howard-Jones' complete contribution available in a single upload.

It's most unfortunate that Evlyn Howard-Jones is so forgotten and that his recordings have been so hard to come by - fortunately his complete output is now available on a superb APR set (very highly recommended, one of the most important releases in recent decades).

The playing on these discs is absolutely magnificent: a beautifully polished sonority, wonderful use of the pedal to add tonal colour without loss of clarity, transparent voicing, fluid phrasing, and refined dynamic shadings.

A bit more about him here, with this and other recordings and a link to the APR set:

https://www.thepianofiles.com/evlyn-h...

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