Reviews

This Hyperion release of mostly a cappella settings reports a confident and highly gifted composer, Owain Park (born 1993), his alma mater The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge doing him proud, Stephen Layton securing polish and beauty, the singers’ robust and well-blended sound captured with sumptuous bloom in its sixteenth-century Chapel. As an ex-chorister, and a Senior Organ Scholar at...
Twenty-something composer Owain Park is very much the rising star on the British choral scene, carving out a reputation as both a choral director and a composer. Choirs (and record labels) have been quick to catch on, and this is by no means the first disc on the market to feature his music, even if it is the first one to do so exclusively. A former pupil of John Rutter, who has written the disc’...
CD OF THE MONTH (Choral and Song) 'Owain Park, born in Bristol in 1993, is already well established in a double career as composer and choral conductor (notably as director of the up-and-coming Gesualdo Six). He'll have felt very much at home here: familiar, as a former organ scholar of Trinity, Cambridge, with the college's outstanding choir and its inspiring director Stephen Layton, and with...
Owain Park weaves new with old, glory with grace, and might with mysticism in this terrific collection of choral works Owain Park may still be only in his mid-twenties, but as a composer, conductor and organist he has already made an impressive mark, in the UK and internationally. His music has been performed by ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, Tenebrae and the Aurora Orchestra; as a...
Masterworks of a rising star sung by a masterly choir Owain Park has not only accompanied and sung in the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge under Stephen Layton, but has been able to compose for such an accomplished ensemble, along with many of Britain’s top choirs. Such opportunities have led Park to write works of extraordinary virtuosity. As his teacher, John Rutter, observes in the booklet...
As I listened to this excellent new recording of the B minor Mass I found myself reflecting on the progress that we have witnessed in recent years. When I first started to listen seriously to the choral music of Bach, some 35 years ago at least, a commercial recording of the mighty B minor Mass by a student choir would have been an unlikely proposition. Furthermore, despite the excellent work...