McDowall's far-ranging harmonic language and cellular organization create a compelling, intellectually stimulating work that is nonetheless imminently accessible and enjoyable even on first listening . . . The music is challenging for singers and requires large forces to carry the drama. * Robert Matthew-Walker, The Organ, Spring 2020 *
Cecilia McDowall is one of the leading choral and vocal composers of her generation . . . The texts brought together the promise of eternal rest with the Italian polymath's musings on the delights of flight. With a rapt chorus gliding upwards towards the light, the closing pages were profoundly moving and the final bars with two solo violins ascending uncertainly into silence confirmed the decidedly mortal aspect of an epic score subtitled 'The Perspective of Disappearance' . . . Cecilia McDowall had prepared her orchestral palette for this score with great care. Her instrumentation favoured the lower end of the spectrum . . . entirely appropriate for the sombrely meditative character of much of the piece. Occasional flecks of glockenspiel and shards of vibraphone and a major, imaginatively conceived role for the harp ensured that the musicas shadows were never overwhelming. * Paul Conway, Musical Opinion October 19 *
McDowall's work takes the text of the Latin Requiem Mass and weaves it through with fragments from Leonardo's own writing, creating a tension between the personal and the ritual, the earthly and the spiritual. It's a friction that brings drama to an essentially hopeful work . . . McDowall has a keen ear for textural detail, painting shadows thickly in low brass and woodwind, before dispersing them in the sudden clattering urgency of the next movement, where Rossetti takes up the narrative, banishing them altogether in the joyful, syncopated dance of the 'Sanctus' . . . This is a requiem that hopes for deliverance, but never quite sheds its doubts - music caught between Earth and Heaven. * Alexandra Coghlan, The Tablet, May 2019 *
The Da Vinci Requiem unfolds as a tapestry of the ancient Latin text and aphorisms from Leonardo, with a Britten-like setting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem 'For Our Lady of the Rocks' by Leonardo da Vinci . . . over a pitiless funeral march of timpani and harp, in place of the Dies Irae. There is much sparkling and shimmering in McDowall's writing. Cadences quiver and shiver unresolved, then vaporise as though overcome by their mysteriousness; decorative figures for trumpet and glockenspiel; rhythmic patterns in the Lacrimosa that nod to Mozart's incomplete setting of the same text; passages for brass and woodwind that recall the Florentine and Venetian canzonas of the late 16th century; glitter-bomb percussion in a jaunty triple-time Sanctus. The most persuasive historical gesture is in the Lux aeterna as two violins spiral upwards in Monteverdian musical calligraphy. * Anna Picard, www.thetimes.co.uk, 8 May 2019 *
Cecilia McDowall's Da Vinci Requiem . . . skilfully interweaves the text of the Mass for the Dead with various writings of or about the great Renaissance Man. The result is a powerfully communicative addition to the repertoire. Not only is the choral writing vibrant but colourful use is made of the orchestra, most notably in the way singing lines are enhanced by harp, glockenspiel and vibraphone. * Evening Standard, May 2019 *
Beautifully constructed moments - the opening of the 'Introit and Kyrie' with a penetrating harp gliding through the orchestra was inspired, and the almost relentless beating of the timpani had the hallmarks of McDowall's profound use of rhythm in her music. The choral writing is a model of clarity, especially when the male and female choruses sing divisi. The 'Benedictus' invokes the separation of the two Ac one floating angelically, the other singing in plainchant. * Opera Today, May 2019 *
There was nothing trite, or lacking in invention, in this new work. The musical and emotional contrasts were tangible . . . The Sanctus and Benedictus, which McDowall sees as the centrepiece or kernel of the work, unleashes, perhaps not surprisingly, ebullience and vitality. The dancing, high-spirited treatment, dotted with a gentle syncopation, feels as fresh as Copland or Bernstein. The choir joins a vivid xylophone in cascading downwards patterns. The Sanctus comes vividly alive (with an effective attacca or direct link to the Benedictus) right to its thrillingy abrupt end . . . As it was, this Requiem proved a tribute not just to Leonardo, but to the composer, and the flair and imagination of the choir that commissioned it, and poured life into it so admirably and intelligently. * Roderic Dunnett, Church Times, 24 May 19 *
