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Colin Matthews

Composer

Matthews, like Britten, has the gift of creating crisply memorable material …

— Edward Greenfield, The Guardian

Recording the Panufnik composers

30 January, 2021

An ensemble of 6 (socially distanced) musicans plus conductor performing together; this is a screenshot on zoom and you can see Colin Matthews dialling in top left.

The group of composers who joined the LSO’s Panufnik Scheme last February (see my post of March 6) have had a pretty miserable year, but we finally managed to get some sessions off the ground last month.

We didn’t manage to have a second meeting before the lockdown kicked in, and their workshops were all cancelled – including what should have been their concluding orchestral session in March of this year, when it’s still hoped that the cancelled session for the previous year’s Panufnik composers may be able to take place.

Christian Mason and I have been keeping up regular online contact with the group, but it’s no substitute for the real thing, and I’ve spent a lot of the year trying to secure funding so that they could write pieces for small ensemble for recording by LSO players. It was inevitably a difficult thing to set up, but eventually we managed to fix three days of sessions in Henry Wood Hall in December. This was a project as much for the players – who as freelance musicians have lost a huge part of their income – as for the composers, and it was heart-warming to watch the commitment and dedication that they gave, never wanting to offer anything but their best. I did what I could to produce the sessions over Zoom, but it couldn’t have happened without David Lefeber (our regular NMC engineer and producer) who both filmed and recorded, and the help of Darren Bloom, who at short notice was an outstanding conductor for three of the pieces.

The final results won’t be known until everything is edited, but for now we have have six happy composers!

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Group of performers posing for a photo together in front of the piano, with Colin Matthews and William Boyd

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CD cover of Beethoven for Three, Symphonies Nos.2 and 5 - image of Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma

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Line up of the panufnik composers with Colin Matthews. One composer is on a video screen, the rest are there in person.

Latest Panufnik Composers

15 February, 2022

Upcoming Performances

Click on the date and title of the performance to view venue and booking details in a new window.

24 June, 2022 - Three Fragments

Aldeburgh Festival Britten Studio, Snape Maltings (Aldeburgh Festival)

24 June, 2022 - O (World Premiere)
Claire Booth (soprano), Tamsin Waley-Cohen (violin), Anssi Karttunen (cello), Huw Watkins (piano)
Aldeburgh Festival Britten Studio, Snape Maltings (Aldeburgh Festival)

View all performances

Useful Links

Faber Music
NMC Recordings
The Holst Foundation

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