This album presents contrasting and striking works from Colin Matthews, Composer-in-Association with the Hallé.  Matthews is internationally commissioned and performed and is equally accomplished writing in a wide variety of styles and for a vast range of forces.  He has been the recipient of major international composition awards and has held a number of high profile positions.  He has recently completed, to great acclaim,  the orchestration of Debussy’s 24 Preludes for the Hallé.

“Matthews is a composer whose music has always been distinctive and distinctively communicative”.
Gig magazine, July 2007

• World premiere recordings which are released to mark Hallé’s 150^th Anniversary and the relaunch of the Hallé label.
• Conductor Mark Elder was Knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, June 2008
• Alphabicycle Order is a setting of wonderfully punning children’s rhymes by Christopher Reid
• shows Matthews writing at it’s most witty, effective and approachable in these settings for orchestra, narrator and children’s chorus.
• premiere, at which this recording was made, was highlight of the inaugural Manchester Festival in July 2007

“Alphabicycle Order might not be Matthews’s most serious work but it is an extraordinarily accomplished one. Brilliantly diverse in its musical language, sympathetic to the wit and wisdom of Reid’s texts and superbly well set for young voices, Alphabicycle Order is a textbook example of how to write for diverse forces in a meaningful, inclusive yet unmistakably individual way”
Gig magazine editorial (Paul Cutts), 17-30 July 2007

Horn Concerto was written in 2001 for Richard Watkins, arguably Britain’s premiere horn soloist, and has been described as “one of [Matthews’] most striking pieces” The Guardian.  It is a dream-like piece, with a romantic framework which is haunted by a series of troubled intrusions from soloist and Matthews’ brilliantly written orchestra.

• Previous acclaim and success (including winner of the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award in France) for Hallé recording of Matthew’s orchestrations of Debussy preludes (HLL 7513)

COLIN MATTHEWS (b. 1946)

Alphabicycle Order

Edward Gardner, Conductor
Henry Goodman, Narrator
Children’s Choir (Members Of The Hallé Youth Choir And Cantores Roborienses)
The Hallé

Horn Concerto

Sir Mark Elder, Conductor
Richard Watkins, Horn
The Hallé

Chorus
Hallé Children's Choir

Catalogue number CD HLL 7515

Preview: https://orcd.co/pnrkvrw