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Marin Symphony Orchestra Presents Colin Matthews's Debussy Transcriptions

May. 01, 2013

Marin Symphony Orchestra Presents Colin Matthews's Debussy Transcriptions

On May 5 and 7, the Marin Symphony, led by Alasdair Neale, caps off its season with a program of French flair, featuring five of Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of Debussy’s Piano Preludes. In 2001, Colin Matthews was commissioned by Sir Mark Elder and the UK’s Hallé Orchestra to orchestrate all of Debussy’s 24 Piano Preludes. Matthews completed this highly ambitious project over the course of five years. The Marin Symphony’s program offers audience members the unique opportunity to hear the preludes twice: pianist Joyce Yang performs them in their original piano version juxtaposed with Matthews’s clever and imaginative orchestrations. Matthews’s transcriptions aren’t note-for-note, but rather capture the individuality and textures of each prelude. As Matthews himself notes, “it has been fascinating to find ways of transcribing textures, which are at first-sight wholly pianistic, into orchestral music which, I hope, would be just as difficult to translate back to the piano.”

Mark Elder led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in five performances of select preludes in 2011, about which Jeremy Eichler wrote in the Boston Globe:

Matthews has done an excellent job in imagining how Debussy might have heard these Preludes reborn as works for large orchestra. In the ensemble’s Feuilles Mortes, the subtle harmonic tints of the original as well as its air of wistfulness were played out to wonderful coloristic effect. And the drama, violence, and sheer dynamism of Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest also scaled up naturally to a vast orchestral canvas.

For concert details visit the Marin Symphony website.

For more information about Colin Matthews go to www.colinmatthews.net or www.fabermusic.com.

Colin Matthews
Minstrels (2003)
for orchestra
2.afl.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn-4.2.3.1-timp.2perc-2hp-str
3’

Les Collines d’Anacapri (2006)
for orchestra
2(2.pic).afl.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn-4.2.3.1-timp.2perc-2hp.cel-str
4’ 

Bruyères (2006)
for orchestra
2.afl.2.2.bcl.2-4.2.3.0-timp-2hp.cel-str
4’

Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest (2001)
for orchestra
2(I.II.pic).afl.2.ca.2(I.II.Bb+A).bcl.2.cbsn-4.3.3.1-timp-3perc-2hp.cel-str
4’

La cathédrale engloutie (2006)
for orchestra
2(I.2.pic).afl.2.ca.2 .bcl.cbcl(ad lib).2.cbsn-4.3.3.1-timp.4perc-2hp-cel-str
5’

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