David Matthews

Composes in the great inherited forms of the past – symphony, string quartet, lately oratorio – and finds new ways of renewing them * Music Advisor to the English Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Deal Festival * Written five symphonies and ten string quartets; also four symphonic poems – two of which; In the Dark Time and Chaconne, have recently been recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the NMC label * Holds an Honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Nottingham * Numerous chamber works include commissions by the Schubert Ensemble, Nash Ensemble, Brodsky Quartet, Brindisi Quartet and many others; vocal music includes a dramatic scena, Cantiga, for soprano and orchestra, premiered at the 1988 Proms, and a large-scale Vespers for soloists, chorus and orchestra for the Huddersfield Choral Society * Recent large-scale work, Concerto in Azzurro is a cello concerto for Steven Isserlis and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and was premiered in October 2002 in Swansea with Richard Hickox


"… there are ample signs that the new modernism of tonal compromise might in his case yield a style every bit as complex and a great deal more subtly expressive than much of the standard work-list for university analysis classes … He may always have rejected Darmstadt but the rejection has been vigorous and in the best sense synthetic, in that debris of Neo-Modernism is just as likely to resurface in his work as memories of Britten or Tippett." -- The Independent