David Matthews - Winter Passions (Nash Ensemble)

Information

Composer: David Matthews

• (01) Terrible Beauty, Op. 104
• (02) Clarinet Quartet, Op. 35
• (04) Marina, Op. 44
• (05) String Trio, Op. 48
• (09) String Trio No. 2, Op. 89
• (10) Winter Passions, Op. 77

Susan Bickley, mezzo-soprano

Stephan Loges, baritone

Nash Ensemble

Lionel Friend, conductor

Date: 2010

Label: NMC

https://nmc-recordings.myshopify.com/products/david-matthews-winter-passions

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Review

The expressive music of David Matthews

The “winter passions” are those of the poet Pushkin, as translated by DM Thomas and set to music by David Matthews in 1999. The baritone protagonist in this short cycle is the very opposite of Schubert’s melancholic wanderer, and Matthews’s ability to write music which is not merely “upbeat” but expressively wide-ranging and emotionally exuberant is heard here at its best.

This disc places three works from the 1980s alongside three more recent scores. In the first group, Matthews’s unfussily imaginative setting of Eliot’s Marina is framed by two concise instrumental dramas, the Clarinet Quartet and the First String Trio: this last piece is especially intriguing for the way Matthews inflects some not-un-Tippett-like figuration in the direction of the kind of more abrasive pop idioms he admires.

The second group comprises Winter Passions, the Second String Trio (2003) and Terrible Beauty (2007). The Trio shares its concentrated animation with Matthews’s Tenth String Quartet, written a little earlier, and complements the quartet’s use of Australian birdsong with allusions to Indian music. For Terrible Beauty Matthews has used words by Yeats for his title but the main text is Enobarbus’s celebrated narrative from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, prefaced by a passage from Homer’s Iliad describing a different if no less tantalising royal personage. Well- mannered musical accompaniment has no place here, and Matthews’s bold eloquence takes on an evocative late-Romantic quality – Zemlinsky, early Schoenberg – that moves forward with rapt determination. Performance values are of the highest throughout this disc.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/david-matthews-winter-passions/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Matthews-Passions-Nash-Ensemble/dp/B003RTM9F0

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David Matthews (born 9 March 1943 in London) is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works. He read Classics at Nottingham University and afterwards studied composition with Anthony Milner. He was also encouraged by fellow composer Nicholas Maw and was strongly influenced by Michael Tippett. Although he has written a fair amount of vocal music, Matthews's output as a whole is centred on the classical instrumental and orchestral forms. He has written 13 string quartets, 9 symphonies, 2 violin concertos, concertos for cello, for piano, for oboe, and several symphonic poems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Matthews_(composer)

https://www.david-matthews.co.uk/homepage.asp

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London-based Nash Ensemble is a chamber orchestra consisting of 11 regular members, though their number can vary widely according to the work performed. The group's repertory is broad, but favours modern works by English composers. Founded in 1964 by Amelia Freedman, its longtime artistic director, the Nash Ensemble took its name from the famous Nash terraces in London, designed by architect John Nash. Mostly associated with the Hyperion label, it has continued to record prolifically, with releases balanced between mainstream repertory and contemporary works in many styles and from many different countries

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/nash-ensemble-mn0001914151

http://www.nashensemble.org.uk/

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