MATTHEWS Symphony No 9 (Woods)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: David Matthews
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Nimbus Alliance
Magazine Review Date: 06/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 64
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: NI6382
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Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No 9 |
David Matthews, Composer
David Matthews, Composer English Symphony Orchestra Kenneth Woods, Conductor |
Variations for Strings |
David Matthews, Composer
David Matthews, Composer English String Orchestra Kenneth Woods, Conductor Sara Trickey, Violin Sarah-Jane Bradley, Viola |
Double Concerto for Violin and Viola |
David Matthews, Composer
David Matthews, Composer English String Orchestra Kenneth Woods, Conductor Sara Trickey, Violin Sarah-Jane Bradley, Viola |
Author: Peter Quantrill
In fact, it’s Haydn who comes to mind – no small compliment – in the initial unfolding of a modest carol melody and its unexpected capacity for symphonic heavy lifting. A motivic fragment of the melody then forms the basis of both a pounding, ostinato scherzo and its slower central episode (in four, not a trio), and it doesn’t require perusal of the score to hear the kinship of the carol with a briefer fourth-movement waltz, more pastorally scored but shadowed in the manner of Max (or Hardy or the Eclogues of Virgil for that matter) by a looming threat to the idyll. Fading out inconclusively over Sibelian pizzicato strings, the conflict is fought afresh and won by a good old-fashioned finale over which the carol melody comes to ring out in a C major happy ending.
That leaves the central slow movement – and indeed the six-minute elegy at the heart of the Ninth doesn’t bear the weight of expectation upon such a structural fulcrum. Echoes of birdsong, of Vaughan Williams and Lutosławski, draw the piece away from the goal of renewal which is the theme of the carol, the symphony and perhaps of Matthews’s symphonic career.
The Ninth Symphony received its first performance at the hands of these performers last year, and at the same time they made this admirable albeit slightly congested recording in St George’s, Bristol. There is more space to the engineering and more finesse to the execution of the two string-orchestra pieces recorded at Great Malvern Priory.
Dating from 1986, a set of eight variations on a troubled Bach chorale deserves a place in the canon of celebrated English string literature from Purcell through to Elgar, Bridge and Tippett. Birdsong returns in the Double Concerto of 2013, which celebrates friendship rather than competition without attaining the sureness of purpose or distinctive profile of its companion works, for all the delicacy and sympathy of the partnership between Sara Trickey and Sarah-Jane Bradley.
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