David Matthews

Summary

‘What the musical world seems to want is an endless succession of new pieces that are played once and then forgotten.’

Much has been written about the differences between the Matthews brothers in both their personalities and their music. In my experience Colin is more relaxed, urbane and casually assured and David more diffident and self-effacing. And although both of them read classics at the University of Nottingham, worked as assistants to Britten at Aldeburgh, helped Deryck Cooke with his performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony and became house composers for Faber Music, they’ve pursued quite different artistic paths.

Colin was a later and more tentative developer because, he admits, he floundered stylistically. But in the early 1970s he embraced modernism – and even minimalism in his Fourth Sonata – and so his music was in keeping with the spirit of the time. Winning prestigious competitions and attracting high-profile performances and recordings, he became an establishment figure earlier than his brother did. In contrast, David began composing earlier and with greater proficiency, confidence and stylistic assurance. But from the outset he was committed to maintaining a fundamental, if sometimes unorthodox, link with tonality, and this was somewhat at odds with the prevailing tide of musical opinion in the 1960s and 1970s. So, perhaps, was the strong sense of the pictorial – drawn from nature, poetry and the visual arts – in his music.

He has always written symphonic works that he calls symphonies, concertante works that he calls concertos, and works for string quartet that he calls string quartets because he believes that there's good reason to renew and regenerate these traditional forms. And by the turn of the century musical fashions had changed sufficiently for this evolutionary approach to be welcomed. He and his brother are now recognised as equally important figures in British music, and in a joint interview for BBC Radio 3 he told Colin that ‘Sibling rivalry, if it exists, is something to do with the fact that when I hear a piece of yours I think, “Gosh, this is really good. I must try to improve!”’

Having known him for some years before interviewing him for this book, I was often intrigued by two particular aspects of his personality.