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Presto Music

‘Rock Music’. Get it? But behind the inevitable pun there’s substance in spades; Edward Cowie (one of the few living thinkers who really merits the term ‘polymath’) has forged a sonata-of-sonatas out of these three works, each based around one of the categories of rock in geology, and spiritually inspired by Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. Each combines passive and active moods – the first, for instance, playing not just with the explosive behaviour of volcanic eruptions but also with the cooling of lava afterwards, and immobile igneous formations like Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway. Roderick Chadwick’s account of these physically and musically demanding works is masterful. Like much of Cowie’s work, this is an album that will yield up more of its secrets on repeated listening, yet also holds enough immediate appeal to draw in the first-time listener.’