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Colin Matthews Violin Concerto Cortège Cello Concerto No.2 Leila Josefowicz violin BBC Symphony Orchestra Oliver Knussen conductor Anssi Karttunen cello Rumon Gamba conductor Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Riccardo Chailly conductor 2 Violin Concerto 20’00 1 Movement 1 10’38 Colin 12 Movement 2 9’22 Leila Josefowicz violin Matthews BBC Symphony Orchestra Oliver Knussen conductor Recorded live by BBC Radio 3 for the BBC Proms 3 Cortège 18’35 Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Riccardo Chailly conductor Cello Concerto No.2 26’40 4 I Declamation. Sostenuto 4’40 5 II Song without text. Molto sostenuto 4’00 6 III Scherzo. Allegro energico 4’40 7 IV Song without text. Sostenuto 4’09 8 V Resolution. Sostenuto - Vigoroso 9’41 Anssi Karttunen cello BBC Symphony Orchestra • Rumon Gamba conductor Total 66’09 Rumon Gamba appears on this recording with the kind permission of Chandos Records Riccardo Chailly appears courtesy of Decca Music Group photo © Fiona Garden The critic Paul Griffiths, as usual, hits at least one nail on the in 2012, the other, from 2015, And there has, of course, been head. Colin Matthews, he writes, is “… the Isambard Kingdom another restrained work exploring more orchestral music. Traces Brunel of contemporary music: master of great time machines, silence, bring the tally to five. For Remain (2012-13) is an ingenious Claire Booth he has set Rilke in the summoning back and re-imagining steamy with energy derived from pulse and from massive, short cycle The Island (composed of discarded or unfinished fragments surging harmony, and openly displaying their structural in 2007-8, exactly a hundred years of others’ work, primarily the Robert engineering, all finished with a craftsman’s care.” after the words were written), Johnson lute song which may be accompanying soprano with seven all that remains of Shakespeare’s Since the inevitable but helpfully composer, made orchestral versions instruments. Then there are the otherwise lost Don Quixote play revealing reassessments that came of songs by Fauré and Sibelius, and touchingly and wittily entitled Three Cardenio. Grand Barcarolle (2011, in his sixtieth birthday year there turned his arranging and completing of a Kind (2011-13), composed for commissioned by Riccardo Chailly has been no slowing down in his skills to much besides, including the horn, cello and piano ensemble for the Leipzig Gewandhaus) was composing activities. His work list, pieces by Berg, Britten and Mahler, of Richard, Paul and Huw Watkins inspired by a whimsical thought already large, has been substantially Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms. and Spiralling (2014), written for that Beethoven had forgotten expanded. Additions have included And, because he is so very good the Italian chamber orchestra Spira to write a slow movement to his many a deft arrangement, not at them there are also quite a few mirabilis whose rigorous rehearsal Eighth Symphony, but according least the completion of his superb pithy celebratory pieces. Cometh the methods he had observed and hugely to the composer the work turned orchestrations (which say a lot fanfare, cometh the man. admired when they played in the UK, unexpectedly into evocations of about his approach to the orchestral as well as the piano trio Nowhere Mahler. And the haunting and deeply side of his art) of all twenty-four of But there has been also much to Hide (2012), which evolved itself moving orchestral song cycle for Debussy’s Preludes for the Hallé, for original (in the sense that the ideas, from a one movement concept into tenor and baritone No Man’s Land which he was Associate Composer notes and forms are his own) and a four-movement memorial for Elliott (2010-2011), written in memory of from 2001 until 2010 and remains substantial work. Two deeply personal Carter incorporating as its second Richard Hickox, also commemorates Composer Emeritus. He’s also string quartets, one a subdued movement a little piano piece, through poet Christopher Reid’s realised the finale of an abandoned seven-movement sequence of half- Berceuse for Elliott, written the day evocation of a meeting of two B minor symphony by the same remembered dances composed after Carter’s death. soldier-ghosts between the fronts 6 7 the First World War and the memory Matthews’s teacher, Nicholas Maw, minutes, it consists of three of Matthews’s grandfather, who died whose loss also occurred during the distinctive sections and is written on the Somme. Matthews’ music decade. And Matthews’ own liking, throughout using one time signature, might be structurally magnificent and for multiple layers distinguished 3/2. Matthews is emphatic that innovative, as Griffiths rightly divines. from each other by tempo, colour, despite its darkness this is not But it also comes straight from dynamic, metre, for harmonic specifically a funeral march. But the the heart, from his own memories, aggregates, for long chordal pedals, general feeling is one of dark experiences, feelings. It’s the for brooding dark textures, enable psychological extremity, Mahlerian in interaction of these two elements, his music to hold energies within nature. structural and emotional, both itself and then release them in great, displayed in the raw, which lends it highly charged, often unexpected The first section opens with three its often overwhelming power. eruptions. It manipulates the passage notes E, B and F played muffled of time, the mark, in this writer’s view, but fortissimo by the timpani. This And so this most recent decade’s of a good music. sequence of pitches acts as a vital additions extends his output beyond underpinning for the entire work. 130 works, further enriching Cortège Just as significant, however, is the Anssi Karttunen Photo: Irmeli Jung an output already of enormous Cortège is the earliest work on this succeeding sequence of sustained distinction and distinctiveness. The recording, dating from 1988. It was notes played, menacingly low in the music, and in his middle section music is still about process and commissioned by the David Cohen register, by trombones, a sort of Matthews seizes on the opportunity edifice, as Griffiths suggests. But it is Charitable Trust and first performed cantus firmus from which the entire for revealing and concealing layers, also about feeling, and increasingly by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera piece grows. At the same time we pushing the minor triad layer overtly so. The richness of texture House, Covent Garden and Bernard hear in the background sequences dramatically to the front in a massive and harmony, clearly defined motifs, Haitink at Covent Garden on 17 of minor triads in the strings, not climax. Finally the work returns with a well-defined rhythms and pulses, February 1989. Cast as a single, establishing any key structure but now empty sounding resonance of its passages of scintillatingly fast dark hued slow movement for large rather acting as referential anchor opening, rooted over D and ending music are all traits inherited from orchestra and lasting nearly twenty points. This is already a multi-layered on a subsiding D minor chord. 8 Cello Concerto No.2 begins with an explosion on low composer, “emerged naturally from Matthews’s Second Cello Concerto brass and percussion and involves her musical personality, style and was composed between September some jagged rhythmic games, the technique”. It was commissioned by 1994 and April 1996 for Mstislav cellist plays only in the two interlude- the City of Birmingham Symphony Rostropovich, who gave its first like trio sections, placing the spotlight Orchestra with the assistance of the performance with the London firmly on the orchestra. Again Feeney Trust and was premiered on Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin much of the concerto’s music is an 30 September 2009 at Symphony Davis at the Barbican, London, on 17 interplay of layers. Often the cello Hall, Birmingham by Josefowicz, the September 1996. The composer has seems caught in a static orchestral CBSO and Oliver Knussen. There noted that its predecessor, written in background, only to be released are two movements of roughly 1983-4, was a very different animal, by the lacerating interjection of, equal length, neither fitting any the soloist “often almost submerged say, brass. Or (for instance in the particular formal blueprint. The under luxurious orchestral textures”, second movement), small pulsating piece opens with the soloist playing a consequence of his wanting mechanisms are set up, and time in stratospheric regions of the to make orchestra and soloist bent through acceleration and compass with sustained lyricism and equal partners. This time he was deceleration. Yet in the end the work ecstatic arabesques, the orchestral determined to make the solo part is, above all, one of searing lyrical accompaniment not unlike that of equally lyrical, its virtuosity deployed beauty. Hard the soul unmoved at the Berg’s concerto, lightly scored and in with subtlety and used in the service surge of almost Wagnerian passion a contrasting pitch region. There are of a work of altogether different at the finale’s beginning. agitated interruptions, little jerking character. The half-hour piece’s five sighs, paired clarinets again evoking movements play continuously. Three Violin Concerto Berg, and harp playing an important of them are slow, while the finale Matthews’ Violin Concerto was role. The intervals of a perfect fifth is a summing up of fast and slow composed for another great string and its inversion, a perfect fourth, elements. Significantly in the single player, Leila Josefowicz, between assume much prominence, again a Photo: Chris Lee Leila Josefowicz fast movement, the Scherzo, which 2007 and 2009 and, says the Bergian resonance. And all this detail 11 in just the opening section. Rapid He produces recordings. He moves TAKE A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY INTO THE WORLD OF triplet figurations from the soloist and shakes through his myriad CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC WITH NMC’S punctuated by punchy orchestral crucial administrative functions, WEBSITE AND MUSIC MAP interjections and underlaid with not least for the Holst and Britten- www.nmcrec.co.uk/musicmap sustained pedal chords follow.