• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Works
    • Upcoming performances
    • Past performances
  • Recordings
  • Listen
  • Gallery
  • News & Views
    • Articles
  • Contact

Colin Matthews

Composer

Raucous, modern, tone-crunching … aggressive, in-your-face music.

— Lawrence A. Johnson, Sun-Sentinel

Five Sonnets : To Orpheus (1975-6). Voice & harp

A setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s five sonnets to Orpheus for tenor and harp (translation by J.B. Leishman). First performed by Peter Pears and Osian Ellis at the Wigmore Hall in London in May 1977.

Buy score 

Categories: Chamber, Voice

Reviews

‘Matthews takes a great risk in setting the lavishly complex sonnets of Rainer Maria Rilke, with their remote, mystical aestheticism, in a simple, almost child-like way. It is all too easy to limit and confine the range of such poetry, but the control and insight of Matthews’ response removed many doubts.’

— Nicholas Kenyon, Financial Times

Primary Sidebar

Search Works & Recordings

Filter Works

Work categories: START AGAIN

28 March, 2023 - Time Stands Still, Dual, 23 Frames for Piano, Horn and String Trio
Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, London

28 March, 2023 - Seascapes
Claire Booth (soprano), Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, London

1 April, 2023 - Hidden Agenda
London Bridge Trio
Hall 2, The Sage Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

28 May, 2023 - Mosaics (world premiere)
London Symphony Orchestra, Francois-Xavier Roth
Barbican Hall, London

View all performances

Useful Links

Faber Music
NMC Recordings
The Holst Foundation

© 2023 Colin Matthews · Website by Bookswarm

Menu
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Works
    • Upcoming performances
    • Past performances
  • Recordings
  • Listen
  • Gallery
  • News & Views
    • Articles
  • Contact