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British composer Edward Cowie is also a conductor, pianist, scientist and acclaimed painter. Born in Birmingham in 1943, he spent much of his early life in the countryside and this early experience of nature has profoundly shaped his life and work. He studied composition with Alexander Goehr and was influenced by Michael Tippett, who became a close friend and mentor, as well as the music of J.S. Bach, Haydn, Janácek, Debussy, Sibelius and Messiaen.

Whilst acknowledging these influences Cowie has continued to explore new musical forms, especially those that can be discovered by a fusion of music with structural and behavioural materials, and has been described as ‘the greatest living composer directly inspired by the Natural World.’ One of the most individual voices in contemporary music, he works with sound, colour, order and disorder, shape, pattern and form, seeing them as a part of a grand unification of sensual input. Edward Cowie’s first BBC Proms commission was in 1975 for the massive orchestral work Leviathan and since then he has produced many works inspired by wild (and sometimes not so wild) places on our planet.

As a successful visual artist, he creates drawings to visualise his subject matter before composing, though his music is not ‘filmic’ or directly impressionistic. In his own words, ‘The three quartets and one solo-violin work presented here represent a period of fifty years of thinking and imagining’. The string quartets date from 1969 (No.1 – the atmospheric ‘Dungeness Nocturnes’), 1977 (No.2 – intricate ‘Crystal Dances’) and 2012 (No.6 ‘The Four Winds’ – West, North, East and South, evoking Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer) and are played with verve and true musical understanding by The Kreutzer Quartet, one of the most accomplished, creative and adventurous ensembles in the UK.

This outstanding Quartet has received works from many of today’s pre-eminent composers and has performed around Europe as well as at its home base of Wilton’s Music Hall in London. The sparkling violin solo piece ‘GAD’ is played by The Kreutzer Quartet’s founder and leader, Peter Sheppard Skærved.