composers

Colin Matthews

• March
• Nocturne
• Waltz

Colin Matthews was born in London in 1946. He read Classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and also with Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he taught at the University of Sussex, where he obtained a doctorate for his work on Mahler, an offshoot of his long collaboration with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. During this period he also worked at Aldeburgh with Benjamin Britten, and with Imogen Holst.

In 1975 his orchestral Fourth Sonata won the Scottish National Orchestra's Ian Whyte Award. Subsequent orchestral works include the widely performed Night Music (1976), Sonata no 5: Landscape (1977-81), and a First Cello Concerto, commissioned by the BBC for the 1984 Proms: these last two have been recorded by Unicorn-Kanchana. In 1989 Cortège was given its first performance by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Bernard Haitink, and Quatrain by the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas. This was the first of a series of LSO commissions, followed by Machines and Dreams, for their 1991 Childhood Festival, Memorial in 1993 with Mstislav Rostropovich as conductor, and a Second Cello Concerto, for Rostropovich, in 1996. Matthews was Associate Composer with the LSO from 1992 until 1999. The orchestral version of Hidden Variables was a joint commission for the LSO and the New World Symphony Orchestra, who gave the American première in Miami under Michael Tilson Thomas in 1992; in the same year the Cleveland Orchestra gave the American première of Machines and Dreams. Collins Classics released a CD of Matthews' LSO commissions in 1996 to celebrate his 50th birthday.

The BBC commission Broken Symmetry was first performed by its dedicatees, the BBCSO and Oliver Knussen, in March 1992, and repeated at the 1992 Proms. It was recorded in 1994, together with the Fourth Sonata and Suns Dance, by Deutsche Grammophon (a Grammy Award nomination); and it forms the third part of the huge choral/orchestral Renewal, commissioned by the BBC for the 50th anniversary of Radio 3 in September 1996. Renewal gained the 1996 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for large-scale composition. The Dutch première of Cortège was given in December 1998 by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly. The ballet score Hidden Variables, incorporating a new orchestral work, Unfolded Order, was commissioned by the Royal Ballet for the reopening of the Royal Opera House in December 1999.

Colin Matthews' chamber music includes three string quartets, two oboe quartets, the Divertimento for double string quartet (1982), and a substantial body of piano music. Between 1985 and 1994 he completed six major works for ensemble: Suns Dance for the London Sinfonietta (1985, reworked for the Royal Ballet as Pursuit), Two Part Invention (l987), The Great Journey (1981-88), Contraflow, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta for the 1992 Huddersfield Festival, and two commissions for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Hidden Variables (1989) and . . . through the glass (1994), the latter given its first performance under Simon Rattle, who also conducted it in 1998 at the Proms and in Salzburg. The year 2000 saw four major premières: Two Tributes for the London Sinfonietta; Pluto, an addition to Holst's 'Planets', for the Hallé Orchestra and Kent Nagano, already widely performed; Aftertones, for the Huddersfield Choral Society; and Continuum, a large-scale work for soprano and ensemble commissioned by the the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Recent works include Reflected Images for the San Francisco SO and Berceuse for Dresden for the New York Philharmonic. Turning Point was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in January 2007. Other commissions include works for the London Sinfonietta and BBC Symphony Orchestra and a violin concerto for Leila Josefowicz and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

He is currently Composer-in-Association with the Hallé, and is active as administrator of the Holst Foundation, Chairman of the Britten Estate, and trustee of the Britten-Pears Foundation. He was a Council Member of the Aldeburgh Foundation from 1983 - 94, and retains close links with the Aldeburgh Festival and the Britten-Pears School, particularly as co-director of the Contemporary Composition and Performance Course. He has long been a member of the Council of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and was a director of the Performing Right Society from 1992-5. He is founder and Executive Producer of NMC Recordings, and has also produced recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin, Conifer, Collins, Bridge, BMG, Continuum, Metronome and Elektra Nonesuch (Gorecki's Third Symphony, for which he received a Grammy nomination).