'its challenges always serve a searching and rewardingly complex musical argument' The Guardian (Andrew Clements)
On 14 September, Leila Josefowicz performed Colin Matthews’s Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle and London Symphony Orchestra. This dazzling and mercurial work was written for Josefowicz, with her distinctive musical personality in mind, and is one of Matthews’s most vivid scores.
A sustained, high-flying lyricism is one of the score’s hallmarks, and it inhabits the rich yet airy soundworld typical of his post-Debussy Préludes pieces. Cast in two movements of equal length, the 22-minute concerto is scored for an economical orchestra of only 36 string players, winds and seven brass and percussion. Flugelhorns replace trumpets, and the distinctive bass sonorities of the lujon are prominent.
View the score and listen on Spotify
‘The soloist was Leila Josefowicz, who played at the work’s premiere in 2009. Then it came across as an impressive, unconventionally disquieting work. It seems even more powerful now, partly because of Josefowicz’s fierce commitment to a solo part that never parades virtuosity for its own sake, but also because its challenges always serve a searching and rewardingly complex musical argument.’
The Guardian (Andrew Clements), Monday 16 September