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 at the same time 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 Mahlers 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 Orchestras 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 Cortge 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 premiere in Miami under Michael Tilson Thomas
in 1992; in the same year the Cleveland Orchestra gave the American premiere 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 BBC
Symphony Orchestra 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 premiere of Cortge 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,
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) - recently re-released on NMC - 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. Matthews music was
featured at the Almeida Festival in 1988, at the Bath Festival in 1990, at
Tanglewood in 1988, and in 1991, when he was visiting composer and teacher, and
at the 1998 Suntory Summer Festival in Tokyo.
The year 2000 saw four major premieres: Two Tributes for the London Sinfonietta;
Pluto, the renewer, an addition to
Holsts Planets, for the Hall Orchestra and Kent Nagano, already performed
throughout the world from the USA and Finland to Japan and the Netherlands; Aftertones, for the Huddersfield Choral
Society; and Continuum, a large-scale
work for soprano and ensemble commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music
Group for Cynthia Clarey and Simon Rattle, with performances in London,
Cologne, Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna and Birmingham. This was followed in 2001
by a new Horn Concerto, given its
first performance in the Royal Festival Hall by Richard Watkins and the
Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Colin Matthews has recently been appointed
Associate Composer with the Hall Orchestra. Future commissions include works
for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra and City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He 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 with Oliver Knussen 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 1992-95. 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 (Goreckis Third Symphony, for which he received a Grammy nomination).
In 1998 Colin Matthews was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate by the University of Nottingham. He is currently Prince Consort Professor of Music at the Royal
College of Music, a Governor of the Royal Northern College of Music, and
Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Composition at the University of Manchester.
February
2002
Courtesy
Faber Music
