This finely-produced disc stands out amongst recent releases of what we might term contemporary classical music both for the character and interest of the music itself and for the short playing-time: it is of course devoted to just one work, without additional music to ‘make at least sixty minutes’ as the current mantra has it (the minimum duration considered ‘sale-able’ these days). From the composer’s website, one can discover other works which might very well have partnered Osgood’s Magnificat, but it is clear – from this excellent recording – that this one work demands our attention.

Fully composed throughout in a relatively assimilated creative language, written as a companion-piece to Bach’s masterpiece, this is clearly the work of a genuinely gifted composer, about whom Oliver Condy writes perceptively in this issue – a composer whose work is essentially tonal based, abjuring slavish adherence to traditional temperamental key-relationships, Osgood’s widely embracing language – as natural, surely, as that of any gifted creative figure – speaks clearly, at times movingly, to the committed interested listener and to artists seeking contemporaneous settings of Christian texts (it is, of course, in Latin).

In that regard, the overall structure of the work would not have phased JSB himself, but the language – wider than Euro-melodic thematicism, embracing more southern-infused rhythms – surely has a broader appeal than merely to that of a Sunday-morning Anglican congregation. This work is an uplifting piece of genuinely contemporaneous appeal, a remarkably original tapestry from a composer about whose output the general musical establishment has been largely unaware for too long. Here is a voice well worth hearing; plaudits to Convivium for their support of this genuine composer.