there may be some music tonight, also...

Indeed! I have to confess, although I couldn't help noticing Lord B's continual mentions of 'the Janine Jansen Prom' it somehow hadn't clicked that this was the same one I was planning to attend.

Will you be there, Alistair? I'm looking forward to David Matthews' new symphony, although I don't think I'll make it in time for the 5.00 composer portrait.

I'm so shallow, aren't I!

I didn't catch it at the time, Tony, but I'm listening now to my off-air FM recording. No frightened horses, and although it's going to take longer to get to grips with it, there's a beguiling nature to the surface; despite the Rob G's typically waspish predictions about it probably sounding like Tippett put though a blender, it seems to have an individuality to its sound world, and if there are other British composers occasionally recalled, they're an of earlier generation: Bax and Walton: structurally it seems to be leaning more to the rhapsodical nature of the former than the tight symphonic architecture of the latter. I very intentionally didn't listen to the introduction, but we've just reached the unmistakeable quotation of the hymn 'Come down, Oh Love divine' for no apparent reason yet, followed by a strange little coda...

Hmmmm: well, I'll be returning soon.

But then the words wouldn't fit the music.....(Ok they would sort of, but the scansion of the second syllable of 'reason' would be awry.....)

Yes, I was there and almost didn't make it to the talk, although a small aside about my efforts to attend that might amuse. I went by train from Bath and, typically, the wretched thing was at least 45 minutes late in arriving, so I had just seven minutes to get to the hall, buy my ticket and rush in. Unbelievably, I made it - but that was not the only thing about the journey from Paddington to Kensigton that strained credibility.
AH: "Albert Hall, please - fast as you can".
Taxi driver: "Right. Going to the Prom, yeah?"
AH: "Yes"
TD: (looks at watch) "Bit early, aren't you? You going to the talk, then?"
AH: "Er - well, yes, actually - or at least that was the intention until First Great Western tried to decide otherwise"
TD: "I reckon you'll just make it. New symphony by one of the Matthewses, innit?"
I could have fallen off the seat. I mean, surely he should have known which Matthews... I mentioned this to both of them after the concert, anyway...

A tightly organised three movement structure occupying a little over half an hour is this new symphony. David Matthews clearly "breathes symphonies" (to borrow the phrase that Schönberg used in respect both of Sibelius and Shostakovich - I wonder what the latter thought about that endorsement) and this is perhaps his most ambitious to date, as well as the best of those that I have heard so far. "Frightening horses" is indeed not at all Matthews's way; he still seems to speak with an identifiable English accent, although the composers that this might suggest in his case - Vaughan Williams, Holst, Bax, Tippett, Britten, Rubbra - are no more than pawns in the game, which is hardly surprising, given that Matthews's work catalogue passed the Op. 100 mark some while ago. The piece also evidences a Sibelian way of deriving a great deal out of not so very much material (not that the music itself sounds like Sibelius, of course) and the various cross-referential incidents strewn throughout the work add to its already considerable cogency and logic. His sense of orchestral colour continues to develop, for all that it is very different to the coruscating vibrancy for which his brother is perhaps well known. All in all, a very rewarding experience made all the more so by a fine performance that has, I think, finally convinced the composer that further symphonies from him are not, after all, off limits.

Best,

Alistair

I was waiting for an actual eyewitness to tell that one but if you hadn't I would have...

Wonderful story, Alistair. Many thanks for sharing it with us.

Why is it that we fall from our seats when we encounter something like this?

I knew a man who worked as a cleaner of oil tankers at the Port of Rotterdam. He liked to read literature. Reading is very suitable hobby for people who work in shifts. His favourite writer was... Samuel Beckett. I will never forget how this huge man entered one of my favourite bookshops (selling mostly literary and philosophical books), baffled all the other costumers and left with his monthly ration of literature.