

BBC Singers/Endymion/Cleobury/Joly/Preston
(Signum Classics)
4 out of 5 4
    • The Guardian,
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Three works in this collection of Edward Cowie's choral music date from the last decade, but it's the earliest piece here, composed in the 1970s, that makes the biggest impression. Gesangbuch, first performed by the BBC Singers in 1976, was one of the major achievements of Cowie's early career, an ambitious set of impressions of the four seasons that are also evocations of locations in the north-west of England. Like all his music they  are expansive, sometimes unruly, but always attractively wrought and harmonically sumptuous; the latest incarnation of the BBC Singers perform the pieces with the instrumentalists of Endymion just as vividly as their predecessors did more than 35 years ago.

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  3. Edward Cowie
  4. Cowie: Gesangbuch
  5. Stephen Cleobury
  6. Signum Classics
  1. 2013

They are equally accomplished in the later, slighter pieces too – a pair of them, the Lyre Bird Motet from 2002 and Bell Bird Motet of 2011, evocations of the sights and sounds of the landscapes of Australia, where Cowie lived and worked for 12 years. Altogether, it's a fine tribute to an underrated composer, though it's a shame the sung texts aren't included in the sleevenotes.

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