David Matthews worked with Deryck Cooke on the latter's completion of Mahler's Symphony No. 10, and an influence of Mahler has lingered in his music ever since. He cannot be called neo-tonal because he never abandoned tonality in the first place, yet there is nothing nostalgic about his music, which sounds unlike that of anyone else. Performed more often in Britain than elsewhere, those beyond might pick this release as a way into his work. The Symphony No. 9, written in 2018 in the composer's 75th year, has a breadth ...
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David Matthews worked with Deryck Cooke on the latter's completion of Mahler's Symphony No. 10, and an influence of Mahler has lingered in his music ever since. He cannot be called neo-tonal because he never abandoned tonality in the first place, yet there is nothing nostalgic about his music, which sounds unlike that of anyone else. Performed more often in Britain than elsewhere, those beyond might pick this release as a way into his work. The Symphony No. 9, written in 2018 in the composer's 75th year, has a breadth characteristic of Mahler even though its five movements (also a Mahler trademark) last less than half an hour in total. Matthews also shows the influence of hypermelodic British composers like Maw and Tippett, and the effect is as if a Mahler symphony were somehow condensed into much smaller dimensions. Most intricate are the Variations for Strings, Op. 40, which are not for a string orchestra in a conventional sense, but for 24 instruments, each of which, as in Richard Strauss'...
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