On 18 March Claire Booth and Nash Ensemble premiere Colin Matthews’ C.A.N.O.N. at Wigmore Hall. The four settings of poems by Christopher Reid for soprano and piano trio last around nine minutes.
C.A.N.O.N. germinated from Matthews’ O, written as a tribute to Oliver Knussen for the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival. The 3-minute setting Reid was a tribute to the “wondrous, hooting, swooping vowel”, from his collection Mr. Mouth, and references Knussen’s love of owls. Following ‘O is for Owl’ Matthews has commissioned three further poems from Reid for the remaining movements: ‘A is for Anonymals’, ‘N is for Nightingale’, and ‘N is for Narwhal’. They are proceeded by the brief instrumental canon of the title, dedicated to Booth.
The Nash Ensemble have premiered numerous works by Matthews, including The Great Journey for baritone and ensemble (1988) and LXX, a 2010 piece for twelve instruments celebrating the 70th birthday of Nash Ensemble founder Amelia Freedman. Booth has premiered Matthews’ The Island (2007), a setting of Rainer Maria Rilke (commissioned by the Nash Ensemble) and Spleen: A Land of Rain, a 25-minute song cycle of Nicholas Moore’s translations of Baudelaire, whose premiere was conducted by Oliver Knussen in 2017. He describes his warm working relationship with Booth in an interview here; she premiered Seascapes, a 13-minute setting of poet Sidney Keyes, with Nash at Wigmore Hall in 2021.
Ahead of the evening concert Nash Ensemble also perform works by Julian Anderson and George Benjamin. Benjamin Nabarro performs Anderson’s Another Prayer, a 9-minute work for solo violin derived from his 2009 Prayer for viola. An enlarged range of harmonic and acoustic colours and rawness of tone pays homage to the folk violin traditions of Eastern Europe. A trance-like passage of high harmonics suggests distant trumpets or flutes, before a vigorous, urgent conclusion. Lars Anders Tomter and Jennifer Stumm conclude the programme with Benjamin’s Viola, Viola (1997) - a technical and compositional tour-de-force for the instrument, fiery, and energetic in character, and animated within by multi-layered contrapuntal writing.