The music of Finland’s great symphonist has long exerted a strong influence on Matthews, be it in the galloping rhythms of Night Rides, his captivating 2011 commission from the London Sinfonietta, or in the celebrated recent orchestral work Traces Remain which incorporates material from Sibelius’s lost Eighth Symphony. Renowned for his orchestrations of Debussy, Faure and Mahler, Matthews has now turned his hand to five Sibelius songs. Creating a 12-minute sequence, the songs (taken from collections from across Sibelius’s output) will be premiered on 15 April by the renowned Sibelius interpreter soprano Soile Isokoski with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu.
More details about the performance can be found here
The Tampere Philharmonic under John Storgårds will give the Finnish premiere of Matthews’s Traces Remain this September.