Edward COWIE (b. 1943)
Where Song Was Born
Music inspired by the birds of Australia
Sara Minelli (flute), Roderick Chadwick (piano)
rec. 12-13 July 2021, St. George’s Church, Headstone, Pinner View, Harrow, UK
MÉTIER MSV28620 [67:12]
Edward Cowie clearly has a strong affinity with the natural world, as many of his pieces have demonstrated over the decades, but birds are his greatest inspiration. Take his choral works such as Lyre Bird Motet from 2002 and Bell Bird Motet from 2011 (Signum SIGCD331. review), or String Quartet No. 6 The Four Winds, where his own garden birdsong is practically transcribed onto the instruments (Métier MSV28603, review). As a keen ornithologist, I very much sympathise.
Cowie spent twelve years working in Australia. I have worked there for a while and experienced the bird sounds in the Outback. I can quite understand how Cowie has felt about pouring his memories into pieces like these. And what better way to capture such sounds than with a flute.
The disc is a follow-up to Bird Portraits (Métier MSV28619, review), which presented birds of the United Kingdom. The booklet cites a blurb for that disc, “Highly original vivid evocations”, which will also do nicely for this recording.
Birds… You may well be thinking “but Messiaen has already done it”. But Cowie’s approach is gentler, almost more loving. I wonder though if the composer actually saw all of these birds: for example, the Sooty Owl is nocturnal and very elusive. Even so, Cowie’s music characterises his calls brilliantly.
I brought back from Australia The Readers Digest Complete Book of Australia’s Birds, a large coffee-table tome. I have it in front of me whilst listening to Cowie’s interpretations. It is fascinating to read the description of the bird call before hearing the music. Take the Eastern Whipbird found along the Australian east coast. The male and female communicate antiphonally. The male ends his song of low whistles with a “swirling upsweep – the whipcrack”. Cowie has the complex “melody” passed between the piano and flute, and uses flutter tonguing to make a harsh scolding sound.
The booklet has a lovely colour photo of a pair of Superb Fairy Wrens. My tome describes the call as having a “high pitched reed-like ‘see’ (sic) and churring when in alarm”. Cowie writes quiet, wispy music for the flute, and uses the inside of the piano not only to create the bird’s voice but, I feel, to say something about the mountain environment in which it lives. There is also a feeling of the environment in most other pieces.
One more example: the Wampoo Pigeon has “a loud, baritone-like far carrying ‘wallock-a woo’”, simulated here as the lowest of the flute pitches, slightly overblown. Next: “Other calls include a ‘bah-roo’”, which Cowie renders as the flautist singing menacingly into the instrument.
Bird behaviour is also a part of Cowie’s approach. I remember watching the Kookaburra perch and pounce on their prey from a tree stump. Cowie writes sudden falling scalic chords in the piano and shrill shrieks to represent what I often thought were frightening and threatening noises from within the bush.
My favourite, as heard through Cowie’s imagination, are the Bell Birds, of which there are at least two. The music is delightfully wide-ranging in its tunefulness and repetitive patterns, picked out by the piano and then rejected into something completely new.
I would not like you to think that Cowie has deliberately set out to use these descriptors, or others, and imitate them. It just happens, in a several cases, that in my view the music and the scientific explanation coincide in a fascinating way.
The performances are astounding. This music is technically and musically challenging, not least in its need for a perfect ensemble. Sara Minelli and Roderick Chadwick have worked closely with the composer for whom these pieces were, he admits, lockdown projects – and probably for the performers if their musical lives were also under restriction.
The booklet includes an insightful introduction by the composer, the flautist’s note “On playing ‘Where Song was Born’ – thoughts with my flutes and I”, and the pianist’s note “A view from the piano”.
Gary Higginson
Previous review: John France
Contents
Australian Raven [3:13]
Australian Wood Duck [3:02]
Australian Masked Plover [2:23]
Eastern Whipbird [2:46]
Willy Wagtail [2:20]
Golden Whistler [3:18]
Superb Fairy Wren [3:23]
Brolga Crane [2:40]
Pied Butcher Bird [3:29]
Bush Stone Curlew [2:54]
Wedge-tailed Eagle [3:00]
Australian Magpie [2:43]
Bell Birds [3:41]
Wampoo Pigeon [2:33]
Golden-headed Cisticola [1:03]
Tawny Frogmouth [2:15]
Pied Currawong [1:09]
Kookaburra [2:52]
Mangrove Kingfisher [3:11]
Helmeted Friarbird [2:37]
