Colin Matthews

Colin Matthews,

Matthews was born in London in 1946; his older brother is the composer David Matthews. He read classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and at the same time with Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he taught at the University of Sussex, where he obtained a doctorate for his work on Mahler, an offshoot of his long collaboration with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. During this period he also worked at Aldeburgh with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst.^[1] His music has been published principally by Faber Music since 1976.

Career

In 1975 his orchestral Fourth Sonata (written 1974–75)

Colin Matthews' 60th birthday was marked by 5 performances given at the 2006 BBC Proms. Recent works have included Berceuse for Dresden, written for the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden and first performed there in November 2005 with the cellist Jan Vogler and the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel; and Turning Point, commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and given by them under Markus Stenz in January 2007. His Violin Concerto was given by Leila Josefowicz and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen in September 2009.

From 2001 to 2010 Matthews was Associate Composer with the Hallé Orchestra, and is now their Composer Emeritus. During this period he wrote a number of works for them, as well as a project involving the orchestration of all 24 of

Three works were premiered in 2011 : Night Rides for the London Sinfonietta; No Man’s Land, to a text by Christopher Reid, for the City of London Sinfonia with soloists Ian Bostridge and Roderick Williams; and Grand Barcarolle for the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly as part of their Beethoven cycle presented in Leipzig, Vienna, Paris and London in autumn 2011. No Man’s Land won the 2012 British Composer Award for vocal music. Matthews' Fourth Quartet was given its first performance by the Elias Quartet at the Wigmore Hall in November 2012 and won the 2013 British Composer Award for chamber music. Nowhere to Hide for piano trio was premiered at the 2013 Cheltenham Festival by the Schubert Ensemble. His work Traces Remain, which takes its name and inspiration from a book of essays by Charles Nicholl, was premiered on 8 January 2014 at the Barbican Centre, London by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo, and was broadcast live by BBC Radio 3.^[5]

In 2014 he wrote Spiralling for

He is founder and Executive Producer of NMC Recordings, and has also produced recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics, Conifer, Collins, Bridge, BMG, Continuum, Metronome and Elektra Nonesuch (Górecki's Third Symphony, for which he received a Grammy nomination).

Administrative work

He is active as administrator of the

In 1998 Colin Matthews was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Nottingham, where he has been honorary professor since 2005. He is currently Prince Consort Professor of Music at the Royal College of Music, where he was made FRCM in 2007, and distinguished visiting fellow in composition at the University of Manchester. He was a governor of the Royal Northern College of Music (where he is FRNCM) from 2001 to 2008. In 2010 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music. He was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society/Performing Right Society Leslie Boosey Award in 2005, honouring an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the furtherance of contemporary music in Britain; and the Gramophone 2017 Special Achievement Award in recognition of his work for NMC.

He was appointed