Fortissimo Autumn 2019

Colin Matthews
Forthcoming
performances
Violin Concerto
14.9.19, Barbican Hall, London, UK:
Leila Josefowicz/London Symphony
Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle
Spiralling
Romanian premiere
19.9.19, George Enescu Festival,
Bucharest, Romania: Britten
Sinfonia/Andrew Gourlay
Little Suite
26.9.19, Music@Malling, Malling
Abbey, UK: Hugh Webb
Metamorphosis
10.12.19, Royal Festival Hall, London,
UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra
& Chorus/Vladimir Jurowski
Hidden Variables
10.12.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall,
Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles
Philharmonic New Music Group/
Susanna Mälkki
Hidden Agenda
21.2.20, Wye Valley Chamber Music
Festival; 31.3.20, Wigmore Hall,
London, UK: London Bridge Trio
Orchestrations
Fauré Seven Songs
29.9.19, Hatfield House Chamber
Music Festival, UK: Siobhan Stagg/
Faust Chamber Orchestra/Mark
Austin
Debussy La Puerta
del Vino/Les collines
d’Anacapri
20.3.20, Tobin Center, San Antonio,
TX, USA: San Antonio Symphony
Benjamin Britten
Forthcoming
performances
Death in Venice
21.11-6.12.19, Royal Opera House,
London, UK: Padmore/Finley/Mead/
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera
House/Sir Mark Elder/dir. David
McVicar
22.11-5.12.19, Deutsche Oper Berlin,
Germany: Bostridge/Carico/Oney/
Orchester der Deutschen Oper/
Markus Stenz/dir. Graham Vick
4.4-7.5.20, GöteborgsOperan,
Sweden: Nilon/Zetterstrom/Carlsson/
Göteborgs Operans/Steuart Bedford/
dir. David Radok
9-30.5.20, Staatsoper Stuttgart,
Germany: Klink/Eiche/
Staatsorchester Stuttgart/Bas
Wiegers/dir. Demis Volpi
3.5-25.6.20, Theater Münster,
Germany: Sinfonieorchester Münster/
Golo Berg/dir. Carlos Wagner
24.5-24.6.20, Theater Bonn,
Germany: Mertes/Morouse/Wessel/
Beethoven Orcheter Bonn/Hermes
Helfricht/dir.Hermann Schneider
Children’s Crusade
28.3.20, Philharmonie, Paris, France:
Etudiants du CNSMD/Choeur de
l’Orchestre de Paris/Choeur d’enfants
de l’Orchestre de Paris/Lionel Sow
Colin Matthews
Rattle conducts Violin Concerto
On 14 September, Leila Josefowicz performs Colin
Matthews’s Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle and
London Symphony Orchestra. This dazzling and mercurial
work was written for Josefowicz, with her distinctive
musical personality in mind, and is one of Matthews’s
most vivid scores. A sustained, high-flying lyricism is
one of score’s hallmarks, and it inhabits the rich yet airy
soundworld typical of his post-Debussy Préludes pieces.
Cast in two movements of equal length, the 22-minute
concerto is scored for an economical orchestra of only
36 string players, winds and seven brass and percussion.
Flugelhorns replace trumpets, and the distinctive bass
sonorities of the lujon are prominent.
Revisiting: A Land of Rain
2021 marks 200 years since the birth of one of art’s great
modernists: Charles Baudelaire. What better excuse for
revisiting Matthews’s Spleen: A Land of Rain for medium
voice and ensemble, an intriguing 25-minute work that
sets 10 eccentric translations of the same Baudelaire poem
‘Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux’ from Les Fleurs
du mal.
Mostly written under pseudonyms for a competition in
the Sunday Times, the eccentric translations by Nicholas
Moore embrace a vast stylistic diversity – sometimes
serious, more often parodistic – an approach which
Matthews has mirrored in his settings. Whilst the more
light-hearted songs recall something like the madcap
energy of William Walton’s Façade, the overriding mood
is of a deep and listless ennui. After a brief ‘Envoi’, the
work ends with the Baudelaire poem in French, set in
the style of Duparc or perhaps Chausson. When this too
evaporates, leaving just a spectral piano accompaniment,
it feels like we have been transported back to a Parisian
salon. Capricious, incisive and unruly, Spleen: A Land of
Rain is also a fascinating meditation on the inexact nature
of translation.
Spiralling
Britten Sinfonia will give the Romanian premiere of
Matthews’s Spiralling this summer at the Enescu Festival,
Bucharest. Originally written for Spira Mirabilis (who
premiered it unconducted!), this 25-minute work for
chamber orchestra is constantly in motion: sometimes
in rapid, scherzo-like figuration, sometimes in a slow
unfolding, and sometimes in bold statements which turn
in on themselves (as in the striking opening).
Everything is renewed
Metamorphosis for chorus and orchestra will be performed
by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir
Jurowski in October. The final part of Renewal,
Matthews’s vast quartet of orchestral works from the
90s, this 13-minute work for chorus and orchestra sets
a text derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses describing the
philosophy of Pythagoras: ‘Nothing in the whole world
endures unchanged… everything is renewed’. Much of the
music is underpinned by deep pedal C, and its hushed,
mysterious mood will make it an excellent curtain-raiser
to Mahler’s Second Symphony, with which it shares the
programme.
Benjamin Britten
The Wilderness of night
Children’s Crusade, a setting of Bertold Brecht for children’s
voices, two pianos, electric organ, and percussion, is one
of Benjamin Britten’s most austere and unsettling pieces.
The 19-minute work takes the form of a ballad telling the
story of a group of children trying to flee the ‘wilderness of
night’ that was World War II Poland, searching for peace
but ultimately becoming lost without trace in the snow.
Composed for the 50th anniversary of the Save the
Children Fund, Children’s Crusade was completed in
January 1969, immediately before two other works
preoccupied with war: Who are these Children? and Owen
Wingrave. Britten himself referred to this hard-hitting
work as a ‘very grisly piece’, and its icy, claustrophobic and
violent music offers almost no hope. Originally in English,
it also exists in a German translation by Hans Keller.
The work will next be performed at the Philharmonie de
Paris in February, with Lionel Sow conducting the Chœur
d’enfants de l’Orchestre de Paris and students from the
Paris Conservatoire. The Paris programme also includes
the Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris singing another Brecht
setting: Weill’s Berliner Requiem.
To peruse works by from all Faber Music’s
composers, please visit:
scorelibrary.fabermusic.com
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PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL