Score 0-571-53944-0 on sale, parts for hire

The title for this single-movement work did not emerge until the piece was nearly finished, and arose in part from the circumstances of its composition. I began work on the piece in the spring of 2003, and had originally hoped it would be ready for the 2004/5 season. But having completed the first main section I couldn't find the way to continue, and put the piece aside for a year while working on other projects. This first section was almost wholly fast music, and when I came back to it, the continuation was even faster - a whirling scherzo-like episode. Again I found it difficult to make any further progress until I realised that what was needed was a complete change of direction, a 'turning point'. The third part of the piece, almost half of the whole, is very slow and intense, and in complete contrast to the earlier music (although based entirely on the same material).

While the turning point itself is very clear, the division between the first two parts is less straightforward, as they share nearly identical music, an episode towards the end of the first section becoming the coda to the second. (The same music also reappears briefly not long before the end of the work.)

Turning Point lasts around 25 minutes, and plays without any break : a commission from the Concertgebouw Orchestra, it was written very much with the very special quality of the orchestra in mind, as well as the wonderful acoustics of the Concertgebouw itself.

My account of the piece is abstract, referring only to the shape, appropriate to a work which is not 'about' anything other than itself. But its musical language breaks some new ground for me, and I hope will leave an impression of complex momentum countered by expressive simplicity.

Colin Matthews

‘It bursts into life with a seething mass of notes in the woodwind, which spread through the orchestra, as if passing down through multiple layers of activity. When the “turning point” comes, it leads to slower music, but if anything the intensity increases. Awash with energy and ideas, the piece scored a palpable hit.’
Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 31 July 2013

‘Turning Point comes out with guns blazing before settling down into calmer states, still charged with nervous energy.’
The Berkshire Eagle (Andrew L.Pincus), 18 August 2010

‘ An ingeniously constructed 20-minute orchestral work, it lived up to its title by switching halfway through from a frenetic mosaic of whirling motifs into a Gorecki-like wall of massive, immensely slow, mostly consonant string harmonies, punctuated by arid clangs and clunks from the percussion.’
The Times (Richard Morrison), 31 July 2013

‘Turning Point was written to a commission from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and that orchestra’s great tradition in Mahler and Matthews’ own involvement with Deryck Cooke’s performing version of Mahler’s last symphony, the 10th, resonates with the tragic dimension the work eventually assumes or at least alludes to in richly sustained strings. Essentially the whole piece is a whirring, motoric, capricious scherzo that secretly wants to be a slow movement. But the engine of it, centred in the woodwind, is not about to run out of steam. It even morphs into a kind of thundering locomotive at one point. Unstoppable, you think, until it does. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the high-octane Thomas Søndergård pointed up the technical accomplishment of Turning Point to great effect.’
The Arts Desk (Edward Sekerson), 30 July 2013

‘Its jaunty introduction suggested a Sixties caper movie but the mood shifted as tuba and contrabass clarinet erupted darkly, while at times the string writing had the stoicism of the Holy Minimalists. For Matthews, that is new territory.’
Evening Standard (Nick Kimberley), 30 July 2013

‘Turning Point links an elaborate scherzo with slowly moving chordal music that gradually comes to dominate the entire work: the ecstatic, richly detailed woodwind and brass writing has overtones of Mahler and Berg.It was beautifully done.’
The Guardian (Tim Ashley), 30 July 2013