Cecilia McDowall: Piper's Dream

Emma Williams - flute
Richard Shaw - piano
Ensemble Lumière Wind Quintet

Playing time: 78 mins.

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BBC Music Magazine, September 2002

Performance - 4 Stars
Sound - 4Stars

Cecilia McDowall is clearly a thoroughly useful composer. Several of the items on this disc are suites of miniatures for flute (or in one case piccolo) and piano; exercises in pastiche which make attractive pieces for teaching or examination purposes. And the remainder, variously for flute and piano, piano solo and different wind ensembles, seem to have been written for specific performers, such as Ensemble Lumiere, of which McDowall is associate composer. The language of these more serious pieces is essentially traditional and tonal, but enlivened by a strong rhythmic impetus and by some imaginative colouring, including piano clusters and pizzicatos. There is a good deal of quotation and and stylistic reference, for example to Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music, a Hungarian folksong, the Monteverdi Vespers and a Schubert song. The most recent piece, Arctic Circle for piano and wind quintet, creates its atmosphere of far-Northern myth and landscape effectively. In general these are enjoyable performances, well recorded, of some likeable music.
Anthony Burton.

Gramophone, October 2002

A native Scot, Cecilia McDowall was educated at Edinburgh University and London's Trinity College of Music, and studied under Joseph Horovitz and Robert Saxton. After raising a family, she returned to full-time composition and has since received a string of commissions from the likes of Sir James Galway, the London Mozart Players and the Schubert Ensemble of London.

Two works featuring wind quintet frame the present, generous portrait-in-sound: Arctic Circle draws its inspiration from Scottish and Finnish folklore, its dancing outer sections forming a vivid and satisfying contrast with the icy chill at its heart, while the thoughtful Andante centrepiece of Winter Music (based on 'Gute Nacht' from Schubert's Winterreise) is a tribute to the composer's flautist father, Harold Clarke.

Of the three pieces for solo piano I was particularly taken with Tapsalteerie, which makes ingenious play with a cradle song by the turn-of-the-century Aberdeenshire fiddler James Scott Skinner (the title is Scots for 'topsy-turvy', in case you were wondering). Piper's Dream and Elven (both for flute and piano) were influenced by Scottish and Hungarian folk music respectively; likewise, Le temps viendra for pinao, oboe and clarinet (the latter two instruemts also doubling on cor anglais and bass clarinet) reveals a fastidious intrumental resource. Elsewhere, the Six Pastiches, Three Concert Studies and Soundtracks are consistently inventive, tuneful teaching pieces for flute and piano, as are the winsome Seven Impressions for piccolo and piano.

Performances are as polished as they are sympathetic; the sound is admirably real. A most attractive collection.
Andrew Achenbach.