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booklet pdf template.qxd 24/04/2008 17:07 Page 1 Landscape Cello Concerto No 1 Hidden Variables • Memorial Quatrain • Machines & Dreams Alexander Baillie cello London Sinfonietta Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra John Carewe conductor London Symphony Orchestra Michael Tilson Thomas conductor booklet pdf template.qxd 24/04/2008 17:07 Page 2 COLIN MATTHEWS DISC 1 DISC 2 Sonata No 5: ‘Landscape’ Cello Concerto No.1 1 Hidden Variables 12’24 Helena Baillie, James Cummings, 1 Ia 9’51 I – Scherzo-Notturno Sarah Gillinson, Andrew Hume, Memorial 2 Ib 1’43 11 Introduction 2’29 Megan Hume, Sonya Knussen, 2 Section 1 3’56 3 Ic 1’04 12 Scherzo 1 1’01 Rebecca Lawley, Joseph Lipton, 3 Section 2 3’57 4 IIa 1’27 13 Trio 1 0’55 Lucy Matthews, Thomas McDonough, 4 Section 3 2’25 5 IIb 6’18 14 Scherzo 2 1’26 Alexandra Storey, Katharine Storey, 5 Section 4 2’06 6 IIc 2’26 15 Trio 2 0’21 Daniel Worters and Sophie Worters 6 Section 5 3’52 7 IIIa 1’54 16 Scherzo 3 0’56 8 IIIb 2’43 17 Centre 0’50 Quatrain 9 IIIc 2’05 18 Scherzo 4 1’16 7 Section 1 2’29 10 Coda 1’32 19 Trio 3 0’38 8 Section 2 1’46 20 Scherzo 5 – Coda 1’36 9 Section 3 2’08 Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra II – Adagio 10 Section 4 2’23 John Carewe conductor 21 Molto sostenuto 1’45 Machines and Dreams* 22 Più mosso 2’04 11 Meccanico 2’46 23 Tempo 1 1’44 12 Sostenuto 1’42 24 Tempo 2 2’25 13 Andante 3’26 25 Tranquillo 3’37 14 Presto volando 1’41 26 Sostenuto 2’21 15 Molto vigoroso 3’26 27 Subito allegro 1’44 Disc 1 total 58’11 Disc 2 total 50’37 Alexander Baillie cello London Symphony Orchestra London Sinfonietta Michael Tilson Thomas conductor John Carewe conductor *with Martina Baillie, Max Baillie, 7 booklet pdf template.qxd 24/04/2008 17:07 Page 4 ANCORA Colin Matthews by Andrew Clements Before settling upon what was to problems of building large-scale formal As with all music, the work of living composers benefits become his mature idiom, Colin structures with increasing confidence from repeated hearings, but all too often the first Matthews’s music investigated a and originality. Formal intuition cannot performance of a new work is followed by, at best, a long number of alternative modernist be learnt; a composer either has the gap before the music can be heard again, at worst, by routes, including a brand of serialism capability to conceive his music silence. Second performances are increasingly hard to influenced by Maxwell Davies and a organically and think it through, or he come by, broadcasts more sporadic, recordings rarer still. In systemic approach after the manner of must devise other methods of creating the nineteenth century, when performances were accessible Steve Reich. But his music in the continuity. Matthews, undoubtedly, is a only to a few, piano duet versions would be made so that 1980s, as represented here by the natural, as the impressive edifices on enthusiasts could get to know new music in their own ANCORA First Cello Concerto, was a long way this recording demonstrate. At the homes. Radio and recordings have long since brought removed from both of these extremes; same time, it would be surprising if his music to everyone, but new music remains the poor a critic eager to pigeonhole period of work on the manuscript of relation, and even when recordings are made, they seldom contemporary composers might have Mahler’s Tenth Symphony under the sell fast enough to stop the accountants deleting them; or assigned Matthews to the section watchful eye of the late Deryck Cooke, the record label changes its policy, or goes out of business. marked ‘conservative’, both for his and his role as amanuensis to NMC’s policy, from the start, has been never to delete: the attitude to harmony and tonality, and Benjamin Britten in the composer’s entire catalogue, from its launch in 1989, remains for the debt his works sometimes last years, had not left their mark on permanently available. So the acquisition and re-issue of showed to the English tradition of his powers of organisation. significant recordings that have disappeared from other Tippett and Britten. catalogues is a natural development. Ancora is more than In the genesis of both Landscape and an archive: it aims to combine such previous releases with If one looks through these pieces for a the First Cello Concerto it seems as if newly recorded material as a way of keeping alive music common thread of individuality, a general concept of the formal outline that deserves to be heard again. The response so far has however, a single characteristic stands was the creative starting point. The been heartening. out. From the earliest scores which twin thrusts of Matthews’ attitude to Matthews now recognizes, he has form and tradition can be seen in the shown a willingness to tackle the two movements of the Cello Concerto. 5 booklet pdf template.qxd 24/04/2008 17:07 Page 6 The first movement unfolds against the landscape that one sees from many transformed. By now the music is and the scherzo material begin background of a familiar scheme; it different angles sometimes in detail, consistently fast, as Matthews reveals regularly enough; the first theme is disturbs because it repeatedly denies sometimes blurred, in daylight and at his ability to incorporate aspects of presented by the soloist, his lyrical line that familiarity. The second movement night,” he has written. “It is not really traditional usage in a context that is woven around an equally long-limbed is essentially synthetic; it defines its a direct journey, nor even a single one, essentially highly original. The whole melody for the trumpet, and the tempo own parameters as it develops, and in since there are three starts and several final section functions as a steadily increases until the scherzo that respect is closer to the way in false arrivals. Perhaps the best way to recapitulation in a symphonic sense, proper is launched as a fully fledged which the single-movement form of think of it is as having something of providing the weight and intellectual fast movement, complete with a pair of Sonata No.5 operates. Labelling a work the irrational logic of a dream.” closure that the scheme consistently trio sections. Yet the expected regular a ‘sonata’ was asking for trouble in the implies. recapitulation of this sequence of last quarter of the twentieth century, The three ‘journeys’ to which Matthews events simply does not happen: at the but sonatas were a feature of refers correspond essentially to the For the Cello Concerto, commissioned climax of the first movement, heralded Matthews’ early orchestral output, in progressions from darkness to light in by the BBC for the 1984 Promenade by a sonorous bell stroke, the music which the term was used without any his original conception for the work. Concerts and given its first performance dramatically changes gear, and sets off connotations of detailed structure. Each begins from the depths, where by Alexander Baillie, a formal plan on a headlong gallop, whose musical images struggle to articulate again preceded detailed composition. nightmarish mood gradually becomes In evolving the plan for the work, themselves and to gain forward Matthews knew the length of the work less oppressive. There is a reprise, but Matthews conceived the idea of a momentum. The music twice pulls (approximately 25 minutes) and that it one from a vividly close perspective, in sequence of progressions out of itself up by its thematic bootlaces, would consist of two movements, the which elements crowd in upon one darkness into light, and his working constantly accelerating, only to first fast, the second predominantly another. Only one trio returns, allotted title for the work was ‘Light Music’. collapse again into inchoate gloom. slow. From that point it was merely (!) to the cello pizzicato, and the music But, as would also happen in the Cello The second ‘journey’ is less single- a process of fleshing out that skeleton eventually plunges into the catharsis of Concerto, the process of realising those minded than the first; it has with music, though in the event the the coda, at last fulfilling expectations initial ideas produced so much interruptions – woodwind nature of that music affected the layout with its recollections of the opening. unexpected detail that the original efflorescences, a brass chorale. The of the work quite profoundly. scheme was superseded, and Matthews third begins by returning to the mood It’s hardly surprising that after such a chose ‘Landscape’ as a more of the opening, and goes on to provide The idea of a gigantic arch, framed by hallucinatory journey the second appropriate subtitle: “The music might a reprise of the important features of an introduction and coda, lies behind movement sets out to restore some be compared to a journey through a the previous journeys, often radically the first movement. The introduction kind of equilibrium. The Adagio stirs 6 7 booklet pdf template.qxd 24/04/2008 17:07 Page 8 into life over a pedal C-sharp, loss and remembrance in Memorial, Between these allusions Matthews’s Variables, but the two works inhabit providing a tonal reference point after though Hidden Variables and Machines ‘own’ music is allowed to assert itself, totally dissimilar musical territory. It the vertiginous flights of the scherzo. and Dreams are both stylistically far as if reminding the listener that it is was commissioned for Mstislav The cello’s role is now that of more discursive.