Clive Osgood: Magnificat – Review by Cathedral Music Magazine

"There is a thrilling, irrepressible rhythmic drive to Osgood's music, and he shows himself an accomplished composer for voices”

1st May 2024

Clive Osgood: Magnificat – Review by Cathedral Music Magazine

Listen or buy this album:

Clive Osgood: Magnificat – Review by Cathedral Music Magazine

"There is a thrilling, irrepressible rhythmic drive to Osgood's music, and he shows himself an accomplished composer for voices”

1st May 2024

Clive Osgood: Magnificat

Listen or buy this album:

This short disc contains just one work – the 2023 Magnificat, written as a companion piece to J.S. Bach’s setting and structured along similar lines into chorus and solo movements. Osgood follows Bach in using the tonus peregrinus in his work, albeit to a much greater extent than his Baroque forerunner, and in reacting to the overall moods that the words (in Latin, as with Bach’s version) suggest; otherwise there is a thrilling, irrepressible rhythmic drive to Osgood’s music, and he shows himself an accomplished composer for voices. The Excelsis choir – formed of some of London’s leading freelance professionals – dispatch Osgood’s virtuosity with panache while finding the requisite tenderness where called for; soprano soloist Amy Carson and the London Mozart Players are on their usual excellent form, and Robert Lewis oversees proceedings with a clear sense of the bigger picture but without neglecting to bring out the many details in Osgood’s writing. 

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This short disc contains just one work – the 2023 Magnificat, written as a companion piece to J.S. Bach’s setting and structured along similar lines into chorus and solo movements. Osgood follows Bach in using the tonus peregrinus in his work, albeit to a much greater extent than his Baroque forerunner, and in reacting to the overall moods that the words (in Latin, as with Bach’s version) suggest; otherwise there is a thrilling, irrepressible rhythmic drive to Osgood’s music, and he shows himself an accomplished composer for voices. The Excelsis choir – formed of some of London’s leading freelance professionals – dispatch Osgood’s virtuosity with panache while finding the requisite tenderness where called for; soprano soloist Amy Carson and the London Mozart Players are on their usual excellent form, and Robert Lewis oversees proceedings with a clear sense of the bigger picture but without neglecting to bring out the many details in Osgood’s writing. 

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