David Matthews: A Vision of the Sea

Record label  Signum Classics
Recording code  SIGCD647
Number of discs  1
Total playing time  67'47
Release date  2021
Buy from  Signum Classics

Recorded at  BBC Media City, Salford
Recorded on  7 November and 6 December 2017
Orchestra / ensemble  BBC Philharmonic
Conductor  Jac van Steen

Includes the following works:

Track		Duration		Work
1		9'42		Toward Sunrise, Op.117
2-4		28'47		Symphony No.8, Op.131
5		8'18		Sinfonia, Op.67
6-9		20'55		A Vision of the Sea, Op.125

Reviews

Colin Anderson, Classical Source, 2021

An expressive Andante leading to a bracing Allegro energico, music of direction, import and sweeping romanticism - quite filmic and dazzlingly scored - before subsiding to reflection, passion spent.

Arnold Whittall, Gramophone, 2021

Many 20th-century composers, from Strauss to Shostakovich, showed how to retain a basis in tonality without writing music that simply presented the style of and structures of earlier times. But since 1970 tonal composers have often made pacts with those forms of minimalism that prioritised consonance and exuberance, tacitly acknowledging that it is much harder to follow Sibelius and others in devising a distinctive style while keeping alive techniques which the radicals had declared moribund. As all the works on this album demonstrate, Matthews manages this difficult task with consistent freshness of expression and cogently shaped structures. His well-placed climaxes never pull their multicoloured punches, with imaginative orchestration admirably conveyed in these finely played and excellently engineered recordings.

John Quinn, Music-Web International, 2021

Matthews offers us an unbroken stream of happy, high-spirited music. The movement dances along, impelled by strong rhythmic energy… The melodic material is highly appealing and is presented amid a riot of orchestral colour… Here is a composer who writes music that connects vividly with the audience. He is a master of the modern symphony orchestra for which he writes with invention and great imagination.