score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library

Crowning Colin Matthews’ substantial body of chamber music are his string quartets, a remarkably rich body of pieces that span over 35 years of composition. Particularly striking is the Fourth Quartet, from 2012, which won a British Composer Award and was described as ‘superbly inventive’ by The Sunday Times’s Paul Driver. A deeply personal seven-movement work, the quartet flitters through shadowy, half-remembered dances (habanera, barcarolle and musette) before ending, defiant and unresolved, on a stark unison.

‘Superbly inventive…’
The Sunday Times (Paul Driver) 18 May 2014

‘The pivotal fourth movement is particularly beautiful and hushed; transporting…’
Classical Source (Colin Anderson), 7 January 2013

‘Matthews’ Fourth Quartet had that satisfying unity and interrelatedness of material fused with a diversity of style and approach that denotes genuinely idiomatic writing for the genre.’
Tempo (Paul Conway), April 2013