On 6 March Rossetti Ensemble released the world premiere recording of David Matthews’ piano quartet A Song and Dance Sketchbook (Karma Classics). The 15-minute piano quartet premiered in 1995 at the Newbury Spring Festival with the Schubert Ensemble; in 2023/24 the Rossettis toured the piece to numerous UK venues including West Road Concert Hall and Kettle’s Yard. Listen here.
The six short movements – moving away from the traditional shape of the piano quartet – reflect a characteristically diverse and playful range of musical, literary, and artistic points of reference. ‘Counting the Beats’ is inspired by Count Basie, and its piano part an homage to his playing, with the cello plucked throughout and the ensemble treated like a group of jazz soloists. The second movement – ‘The Solitary’ – is a slow Sarabande inspired by a landscape by Caspar David Friedrich, with references to the English folksong The Three Ravens. The song returns in the succeeding movement, an enigmatic waltz for muted strings.
Following the scherzo, led by solo viola, movement five is a ‘Lied ohne Worte’. Here Matthews transcribes his own setting of Hölderlin for voice and piano, ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ – a text also set by Britten in his song cycle after the poet, the finale of which Matthews quotes at the end. It is dedicated to Donald Mitchell, founder of Faber Music. ‘The sun has set’ pays homage to another Romantic in the form of Franz Schubert, with abrupt modulations and quotations from his late A major piano sonata and E-flat piano trio.
The members of The Rossetti Ensemble have been longstanding supporters of Matthews’ work. In 2013 Sara Trickey and Sarah-Jane Bradley premiered Matthews’ Double Concerto at the Presteigne Festival, conducted by George Vass; on 1 April Bradley premiered Matthews’ Elegiac Variations for solo viola at London’s Milton Court, as well as performing Darkness Draws In for solo viola. In 2000 she premiered Winter Journey, a solo viola piece after Schubert’s Winterreise, as well as Winter Remembered for solo viola and strings at the 2002 Deal Festival with George Vass. In 2007 Trickey premiered Adonis, Matthews’ 12-minute instrumental depiction of the god of beauty and attraction.