The work of William Mathias ranges across many genres
- it includes three symphonies, three piano concertos, concertos
for violin,
harpsichord, harp, oboe, clarinet and organ and a variety of
orchestral dances; one opera (
The Servants of 1981 - which
has a libretto by no less than Iris Murdoch); three string quartets
and a number of other chamber works; a considerable body of music
for organ. But it is, above all, as a composer of choral music
that his powers of invention and the sheer quality of his craftsmanship
are consistently heard at their very best - though I would also
make a claim for the rarely-heard string quartets.
Wells Cathedral Choir and organist Jonathan Vaughn - under the
direction of Matthew Owens - do something like full justice to
this aspect of Mathias’s work on this excellent CD. The
choir sing with sensitivity and energy throughout, with a variety
of colour and texture, with a wholly engaging balance between
polish and expressiveness; what the words mean seem to matter
to this choir and its director at just as much as beauty of sound
- something that can’t be said for every choir in the English
cathedral tradition. Jonathan Vaughn shows himself, once again,
to be both a highly shrewd accompanist and well able, as a soloist,
to handle - though the feet are relevant here too! - the cross-rhythms
of Processional or the wit of Carillon, playing the Cathedral’s
rebuilt Willis organ. The work of Matthew Owens is everywhere
intelligent and assured.
As the fine booklet notes by Roderic Dunnett suggest, Mathias’s
music was a fusion of many passions and influences - particularly
important amongst them being Benjamin Britten, tempered, as it
were, by a knowledgeable fondness for the medieval and for modern
French music - but the outcome was distinctively individual.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Missa Brevis of 1973,
written for St. Matthew’s Northampton. There are passages
of remarkable beauty and profundity here, not least in the Kyrie
with its dark, introspective tension, in the restrained ebullience
of the Sanctus, where the writing counterpoints organ and voices
to striking effect, and in the Agnus Dei, rapt and delicate,
utterly persuasive in its spirituality. In musical architecture,
in responsiveness to text and in emotional substance the Missa
Brevis is a masterpiece of modern British church music and it
gets, here, a performance that does it justice.
The variety of Mathias’s choral writing is made very clear
if, by the side of the weight of the Missa Brevis, one puts carols
such as A Babe is Born and In excelsis Gloria, both of which
have their roots in the medieval, without ever sounding merely
archaic or nostalgic for earlier musical languages. Mathias can
also do the grand public statement - as is well exemplified in
the openness and accessibility of Let the people praise thee,
O God, written for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana
Spencer in 1981.
In short, wherever one turns on this CD one encounters music
of real sophistication - but it is always a sophistication of
technique and invention in the service of ends greater than itself,
in the service of text and occasion, emotion and spirit.
Glyn Pursglove
Jonathan Vaughn (organ) 
