Colin Matthews - Violin Concerto

The Guardian 80

Josefowicz/Karttunen/BBCSO/RCO/Knussen/Gamba/Chailly
(NMC)

Such is Colin Matthews’s influence on UK music, as composer, arranger, teacher and catalyst, that it would have been impossible for the record label he founded to ignore his 70th birthday this year. This disc leads with his Violin Concerto as performed by Leila Josefowicz and the BBCSO under Oliver Knussen at the 2010 Proms; Josefowicz, for whom Matthews tailored the work, soars high above the orchestra as if on a thermal. This supple, lyrical concerto is balanced with two of Matthews’s more characteristically time-stretching scores. The 1996 Cello Concerto No 2, with Anssi Karttunen as soloist, is arresting if not as immediately engaging, and the clouds clear at the beginning of its final movement in a passage of rapt meditation. In between, comes Cortège, written in 1988. Recorded by the Concertgebouw under Riccardo Chailly, it’s sombre but driven – monumental, yes, but one somehow feels inside the monument rather than gazing on it.