Matthews’s reputation as one of the most formidable living British symphonists, is bolstered by the recent announcement of a BBC Music Magazine Award for the premiere recording of his second and sixth symphonies (Dutton CDLX7234).
‘It’s hard to over-estimate the value to me of these very fine performances on disc,’ says David Matthews of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s recording of his Symphonies No 2 and 6, conducted by Jac van Steen.
‘Jac was the ideal conductor: so unpretentious, but so impressive. I’m actually rather proud of the Sixth Symphony.’ Van Steen himself repays the compliment: ‘David writes so well for orchestra, he really knows how to put things together – literally, to “compose”, and create such emotive, beautiful music with enormous rhythmic vitality. I’m keen to take the Sixth Symphony to Germany: I know they would really understand his music, and it can be combined well with Mahler or Berg.’
The two works come from very different times in Matthews’s career: Symphony No. 2 was written and revised during the late 1970s, and was eventually taken up by Simon Rattle who gave the premiere of it in 1982. The Sixth began life as a Scherzo, a commission by the Three Choirs Festival to write a variation on Vaughan Williams’s Down Ampney. But Matthews always knew it would form part of a larger work. Both Mahler and Vaughan Williams’s own sixth symphonies mean a huge amount to him: ‘Both are great, tragic symphonies, and both had an effect on my own Sixth.’ A cowbell in E flat pays homage to Mahler, while his treatment of Vaughan Williams’s hymn tune is highly subtle, appearing in the whirlwind Scherzo, and then gradually emerging in the radiant slow finale variations. He’s currently making new editions of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies, so feels very close to the composer. As van Steen remarks: ‘David’s symphony takes the English symphonic tradition a big step into the 21st Century. I hope this award will make people sit up and listen to a wonderful work.’
BBC Music Magazine (Ross Cohen), May 2011