The work Terrible Beauty, for mezzo-soprano and seven players, sets Enobarbus's eulogy of Cleopatra from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, prefaced by lines from Homer's Iliad, which inspired Shakespeare's text.
Recording & Production
All works on this album were recorded in April 2009 at Coombehurst Studio, University of Kingston, except for String Trio No. 2, which was recorded in November 2009 at the Menuhin Hall.
Composer's Artistic Vision
David Matthews's music balances re-engagement with older British traditions, like those of Vaughan Williams, Britten, and Tippett, with a thorough assimilation of European traditions from Bach to Mahler.
Composition History
David Matthews's Clarinet Quartet, Op. 35, was commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, a British chamber group, and premiered by them at Wigmore Hall in 1984.
Compositional Technique
David Matthews's String Trio No. 2 draws its overall formal model from North Indian classical music, featuring a slow, freely improvised section followed by a fast, rhythm-based section.
Composer Biography
David Matthews, a leading British composer born in the 1940s, spent three years as an assistant to Benjamin Britten, a renowned British composer, at Aldeburgh in the late 1960s.
Compositional Technique
In his first String Trio, David Matthews incorporated a motif spelling out the name NASH (E-A-E flat-B in German note-nomenclature) in all four movements, dedicated to the Nash Ensemble and its founder.
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