On 14 September Christian Gerhaher and the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin – made up from members of the Berlin Philharmonic - give the Swiss premiere of David Matthews’ arrangement of Berlioz’s Les nuits d'été (2021) for baritone and string sextet at the Zermatt Music Festival. The 27-minute cycle of six songs will be performed in the spectacular location of the Kapelle Riffelalp, some two thousand meters above sea level, in the Swiss Alps.
The chamber version of Berlioz’s settings of Théophile Gautier premiered with Gerhaher and a starry lineup of instrumentalists that included Isabelle Faust, Timothy Ridout, and Jean-Guihen Queryas at the Hindsgavl Festival, Denmark, in 2021. Gerhaher, who commissioned the arrangement, subsequently toured it to the Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Wigmore Hall, Musikverein, and Elmauer Liedwoche.
Matthews has created numerous chamber-scale arrangements of masterpieces from the song repertoire for the world’s leading singers. In 2014 he arranged Brahms’ Vier Ernste Gesänge, as well as a selection of songs by Schubert and Wolf, for Thomas Hampson and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in 2014 at the Forum am Schlosspark, Ludwigsburg. In 2021 Matthews created a reduced orchestration of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder for Sarah Connolly and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.