The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – When Love Speaks: Choral Music by Owain Park (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

The Epiphoni Consort follow up on their acclaimed debut, of music by David Bednall, with a portrait album of another young choral composer on the ascendant.

Owain Park’s musical tracks were set early, when he joined the choir of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol as a boy chorister. Subsequently organ scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, he draws – while still only in his twenties – on a specially English tradition of text-setting and choral writing which links him to figures such as Stanford and Vaughan Williams.

His innate understanding of the medium is shown in the skillfully contrasted weights and colours of Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time, one of two Shakespeare cycles included here, and the Epiphoni Consort singers make the most of the luxuriant chordal writing that characterizes Park’s style as a whole – what his former teacher John Rutter has described as ‘towers of sound’.

The choir is joined by a solo violin for the call and response patterns of Antiphon for the Angels, while Sing to me, windchimes movingly sets loss and yearning alongside poetic images of spring and youth.

Owain Park is one of several young British composers contending for the throne of John Rutter, who was one of his teachers. On this album, he takes a big step forward to becoming Rutter’s heir apparent. Park is active both as a conductor and as a composer, but here, he leaves the performance to the Epiphoni Consort under director Tim Reader. To say that this has advantageous results is not in the least to impugn Park’s skills as a conductor, only to suggest that the original perspective of the Epiphoni Consort adds something to the music. Park is certainly influenced by Rutter but also shows the influence of Vaughan Williams and the late Romantics such as Stanford. His own contribution comes partly in his ability to add variety within groups of works, using an impressive economy of means. Listen to the first Interlude and then the setting of the insanely familiar “Loveliest of Trees” in Sing to Me, Windchimes, a group of A.E. Housman songs: the way the poem pops out vividly is the essence of Park’s style. There are two sets of Shakespeare songs, which may seem excessive, but again, the settings are fresh, and one hopes they are adopted for Shakespeare productions in the future. Delphian’s engineering in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood, London, is exceptional in its clarity and detail, and the overall effect of the whole is haunting.

Tracklist:
1. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Louisa (04:41)
2. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: I. Sing to Me, Windchimes (03:12)
3. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: Interlude. The Inundation of the Spring (00:36)
4. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: II. Loveliest of Trees (03:44)
5. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: III. Star of the Frost (02:03)
6. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: IV. The Rainy Summer (04:58)
7. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: Interlude. A Wind That Woke a Lone Delight (00:52)
8. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: V. Into My Heart an Air That Kills (03:38)
9. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Sing to Me, Windchimes: VI. Life has a Loveliness to Sell (07:45)
10. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Antiphon for the Angels (10:23)
11. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Love Songs: I. Love Is a Smoke (02:31)
12. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Love Songs: II. Love, Whose Month Is Ever May (02:40)
13. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Love Songs: III. So Sweet a Kiss (04:30)
14. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Love Songs: IV. When Love Speaks (02:15)
15. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Holy Is the True Light (05:57)
16. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: I. Light Thickens (02:21)
17. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: II. Weary with Toil (03:56)
18. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: III. Now It Is the Time of Night (02:05)
19. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: IV. Let Fall the Windows of Thine Eyes (02:37)
20. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: V. Be Not Afeard (02:44)
21. The Epiphoni Consort & Tim Reader – Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time: VI. The Cloud-Capp’d Towers (03:28)