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. 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 - 99. 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. It was later recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, together with the Fourth Sonata and Suns Dance; 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 and given the 1997 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for large-scale composition. His ballet score Hidden Variables opened the Royal Ballet's season in December 1999, and the large-scale ensemble piece Continuum was toured in Europe by the BCMG and Simon Rattle in Autumn 2000. Recent orchestral works include a Horn Concerto for Richard Watkins and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Reflected Images for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Berceuse for Dresden for the New York Philharmonic, and Turning Point for the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Matthews' latest large-scale commission from the CBSO for a violin concerto, was premiered in September 2009 by violinist Leila Josefowicz. Future commissions include works for the London Sinfonietta, BBCSO and the Hallé Orchestra, whose Associate Composer he has been since 2001 and for whom he completed his orchestration of all 24 Debussy Preludes.
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.
Colin Matthews is active as administrator of the Holst Foundation, chair of the Britten Estate, and trustee of the Britten-Pears Foundation. 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 many other major labels.
October 2009