Edward Cowie: Bird Portraits Peter Sheppard Skærved & Roderick Chadwick

• Edward Cowie (b. 1943): Bird Portraits:
• 1Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 1, Mute Swan02:09
• 2Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 2, Kingfisher02:37
• 3Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 3, Great Crested Grebe03:15
• 4Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 4, Dipper03:33
• 5Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 5, Bittern02:14
• 6Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 6, Coot01:36
• 7Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 7, Barn Owl02:21
• 8Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 8, Pheasant01:56
• 9Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 9, Rook02:37
• 10Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 10, Magpie03:01
• 11Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 11, Starling02:46
• 12Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 12, Skylark03:52
• 13Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 13, Tawny Owl03:41
• 14Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 14, Green Woodpecker02:16
• 15Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 15, Song Thrush03:33
• 16Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 16, Wren05:31
• 17Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 17, Bullfinch02:05
• 18Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 18, Wood Warbler03:08
• 19Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 19, Curlew03:16
• 20Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 20, Cormorant03:18
• 21Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 21, Osprey03:21
• 22Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 22, Arctic Terns02:11
• 23Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 23, Puffins01:36
• 24Cowie: Bird Portraits: No. 24, Great Northern Diver03:40
• Total Runtime01:09:33

Info for Edward Cowie: Bird Portraits

Edward Cowie is one of the most individual and notable voices in contemporary music and considered by many to be the greatest living composer directly inspired by the natural world. He has worked for over 40 years writing music in response to landscapes and the voices of creatures. In this new cycle of 24 ‘sonic portraits’ of different British birds from 4 distinctive habitats, Cowie has drawn even closer to composing music that not so much imitates nature, but that – after much study and extensive field-work – has led to new music with highly original treatments of the relationships between the bird singers and where and how they sing. This album will be followed in early 2022 by a companion (music for flute and piano) featuring birds of Australia entitled ‘Where Song was Born’.

This is a major addition of importance to the contemporary chamber repertoire and will benefit from the success and glowing reviews of previous Cowie albums.

Peter Sheppard Skærved and Roderick Chadwick are at the highest level of musical achievement and are champions of the best contemporary composers, while Skaerved is also renowned as a musical historian and writer. His continuing series of ‘The Great Violins’ recordings and other early music for the instrument are testament to his enormous depth of knowledge and the innate musicality which also inspires the magical performances on ‘Bird Portraits’.

Edward Cowie is no stranger to the inspirational attractions of the forces of Nature. For more than four decades now, he has frequently musically responded to many kinds of habitats all over the world and to many different types of sounding creatures. It is this lifelong study and experiencing of wild nature with his own unique and powerful sonic translations of those experiences that have earned for him the just accolade ‘considered by many to be the greatest living composer directly inspired by the natural world’. In this brand new cycle of 24 ‘sonic portraits’ of different British birds from 4 distinctive habitats, Cowie has drawn even closer to composing music that not so much imitates nature, but that -through many forms of study and extensive field-work- has led to new music with highly original treatments of the relationships between singers and where and how they sing. Comparisons with Messiaen might be expected but Cowie’s music is in a world and sonic habitat of its very own. Virtuosic, brilliantly coloured and magnificently diverse, this is music for all of the senses, and from a composer who uses all of his own senses under the spells of Nature.

Peter Sheppard Skaerved, violin
Roderick Chadwick, piano

Peter Sheppard Skærved
is the only violinist to have performed on the violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. His exploration of the relationship between string music and the instruments used to play it has resulted in years of collaboration with luthiers, archetiers, and projects (ranging from performances to films) working with some of the world’s great collections, especially with the Library of Congress, Washington DC, where he has performed on up to 6 violins in one concert!

He is the dedicatee of over 400 works for violin, by composers including Hans Werner Henze, Poul Ruders, David Matthews, Judith Weir and Jörg Widmann. He has made over 60 critically acclaimed recordings, including cycles of sonatas by Tartini and Beethoven, Quartets by Reicha and Tippett, and many of the works written for him, resulting in a Grammy nomination, and awards from the BBC Music Magazine.

Peter is the only musician to have been invited to curate an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and has made and performance projects for the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and galleries worldwide. In the near future, he will be playing all 30 Tartini solo sonatas in residencies in Brussels, Tallinn and Bergen, will complete a residency at the Dover Museum, and will give a lecture recital on Darwin and music in Maine.

He has one of the broadest discographies of any violinist, stretching from pioneering recordings of Michael Haydn concerti, through Beethoven to the first recording of the original version of George Rochberg’s concerto, recorded under the composer’s supervision in Germany and contemporary works by composers such as Elliott Schwartz and Paul Pellay.

Peter is also the leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, violinist of Ensemble Triolog (Munich) and Longbow and the long-term duo partner of pianist Aaron Shorr.

As a writer, he has published on subjects ranging from Victorian painters and violin-making to contemporary quartet writing and Paganini. He is married to the Danish writer and poet, Malene Skærved, and is the Viotti Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he was elected Fellow in 2013.

Roderick Chadwick
is a pianist, teacher and writer on music. He has performed some of the most challenging works for the instrument, including Lachenmann’s Serynade at the inaugural London Contemporary Music Festival, and the first complete performance of Jeremy Dale Roberts’s Tombeau since its 1969 premiere at the hands of Stephen Kovacevich. He collaborates with some of the UK’s most adventurous musicians, with previous recordings for Divine Art/Métier including music by Michael Finnissy and David Gorton with members of the Kreutzer Quartet, and Mihailo Trandafilovski, Mozart and Ole Bull with violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved. Other recordings to date include Stockhausen’s Mantra with Mark Knoop and Newton Armstrong – which was described as ‘a real contender’ by Gramophone magazine – and works by Gloria Coates, Sadie Harrison and Alex Hills.

Roderick is a member of ensembles CHROMA and Plus-Minus, performing with them at festivals such as Huddersfield, Ultima (Oslo) and the 2019 Warsaw Autumn Festival. His first performance on BBC Radio 3 was at the age of 14 (the Britten Gemini Variations live from the Aldeburgh Festival), and broadcasts since have included solo works by Laurence Crane, Richard Barrett and Will Gregory.

In 2018 Roderick published Messiaen’s ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, From Conception to Performance, co-authored with Peter Hill. He is a regular performer of Messiaen’s works, including the entire Catalogue d’oiseaux and La Fauvette des jardins in a single concert event. In 2008 he was artistic advisor to the Royal Academy of Music for their part in the Southbank Centre’s Messiaen centenary festival.

He attended Chetham’s School in Manchester in the 1980s, studying with Heather Slade-Lipkin, and later moved to London to learn with Hamish Milne. He lives in South London and is Reader in Music at the Royal Academy of Music.

Booklet for Edward Cowie: Bird Portraits