Having listened to the composer's music for a good few weeks, I can conclude that I am very impressed by everything I have heard. The composer's basic style offers an intoxicating sense of Stanford-deluxe; all that you enjoyed about Stanford, but wish were less restrained, might possibly be found here. Occasionally the orchestral music offers real clues as to where Bax and Vaughan Williams emerged from.
The Border Ballads, especially Grey Galloway (a favourite of Havergal Brian), are magnificent. Expertly proportioned works, and with strong melodic material that always comes in well before the mind begins to wander. The scoring also ideally fits the subjects - the brass towards the end of the aforementioned piece is such a beautiful resolution, not dissimilar from the mystical way that Bantock wrote. The opening of Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity is another example of how far removed the composer's music can be from his compatriots, with its decidedly impolite proto-Baxian tone.
The quartets are excellent as well, offering a consistently rewarding and contrasting series of works which are rather individual in tone. The 7th and 16th quartets, both with a strong concept, are tailored towards their differing moods. The harmonic language is also slightly more advanced from what I am used to from Parry, Mackenzie, etc, though it always serves to flavour the traditionally structured works than transform them. I find them easily able to stand alongside those of, say, Taneyev, Myaskovsky, Glazunov, etc. The violin sonata disc on Chandos is very impressive, full of the mythical Romanticism of a composer like Medtner. I would insta-buy a recording of his piano trios (he apparently wrote four) if such a thing were recorded, not to mention the rest of the sonatas.
I suppose that my overriding feeling of the composer's output is that it should be dry and academic, but never is. This is not to say that McEwen's music pushes the envelope all that often, but it's always startlingly creative and affirmative, and quite impressively rarely feels as though the composer is just going through the motions.
Fans of Hebrides-style Mendelssohn, Stanford's Irish rhapsodies, and perhaps those frustrated by Bax's meanderings really ought to hear this. Perhaps even Rimsky Korsakov (a very tentative link) fans could find something of value - certainly those who admire Medtner's violin sonatas really need to investigate McEwen's chamber music.
