It is good to see that Colin Matthews is getting
some attention on record to match, in some measure, the sumptuous
Chandos recording of the music of his brother David. Colin has
been associated with the Hallé since 2001 and his Debussy orchestrations
have been praised by MWI’s John Quinn and Bob Briggs (review
review)
.
Alphabicycle Order is a half-hour
fantasy using narration and children's singing with a brilliant
orchestral canvas. It stands in the lines of tradition established
by Rawsthorne's Practical Cats at one extreme and Mathias's
This Worldes Joie at the other. Indeed the glint and
tinkle of the percussion rather suggest that Colin Matthews
was listening closely to Mathias in the 1960s and 1970s. We
know Henry Goodman's voice from another peak in Hallé's distinguished
catalogue: the complete music for RVW's The
Wasps. This work is no charter for softies. There are
some really eerie moments and every one of Christopher Reid’s
poems - one for each letter of the alphabet – has a tang, a
barb, a chuckle or a screech. The squeak of the trembling Jelly
poem complete with a howlingly bad play on words is remarkable
- once heard never forgotten. Nosebush has a Brittenesque
spit and spatter of pizzicato as well as some childlike innocent
word fun. The Oy Oy has the narrator rushing through
his words to the off-sync shouts of Oy! Oy! from the children's
choir. How dreadful if this work had been too civilised – too
fifties! Instead there's enough danger here to ensure it stays
the provocative side of civilised. There's also enough in the
way of aural surprises to keep everyone jumping. Adult sentiments
cut across and through this music so that participants and listener
are challenged and shocked/intrigued. How about the umpire Vampire
- needed to keep today's sportsmen in order and ready to mete
out bloody retribution for the slightest defiance. The strange
fanciful creatures reminded me of another work from an earlier
era. It’s just as zany and awaits a first recording: Josef Holbrooke's
Bogey Beasts to illustrations by Sidney Sime. Matthews
plays dissolute fun with Saint-Säens carnival. In The Yatch
harbour is bullied into rhyming with macabre and the poem ends
with the wreck of The Yatch to the words: “Poorly built
… so badly spelt!”.
All the words are printed in the booklet and
the performance is complete with applause from an audience otherwise
very quiet.
Matthews has written three concertos, two for
cello (one
of those for Rostropovich) and this one for horn. This work
is luxuriously tracked in ten segments. The romping orchestral
horns are off-stage and distant - as prescribed by the composer
- in this recording. The work is reflective, solipsistic and
pleasing in its rhapsodic movement from episode to episode,
pulse to pulse. It is glimmeringly Bergian at times and dreamily
evocative of the Hoddinott
concerto at others. Those off-stage orchestral horns romp and
whoop in the central Scorrevole. Seemingly goaded, the
soloist enters into the defiant fanfaring while the strings
skitter about like a scattering nest of pismires. The music
rises to some majesty in the Poco sostenuto. In fact
the marking sostenuto is part of the name of each of
the final four movements. The music in tr. 34 has the quality
of a dream in swirling fog which parts when the lunar light
cuts through in glassy bubbles. The horn's solo role involves
movement among the orchestra, across the stage and joining the
off-stage horns. This piece of theatre recalls the Clarinet
Concerto of Thea
Musgrave. This Horn Concerto is held by an immanent drifting
leisurely pulse.
Good annotation and a sensible and much needed
long silence before we get to the Horn Concerto.
The recording quality is nothing short of superb.
Two works encompassing worlds of the imagination
that are stimulating, zany, dark and surreal.
Rob Barnett
Richard Watkins (horn);
children's choir: Henry Goodman (narrator) 
