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David Matthews’s Five Trees Premiered at the UK's Three Choirs Festival

Aug. 08, 2022

David Matthews’sFive Trees, a new piano piece for Joseph Tong, was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival, Hereford on July 27. Five Trees was co-commissioned by Joseph Tong with the generous support of John S. Cohen Foundation, Three Choirs Festival, and Presteigne Festival. A Finnish premiere follows at the Sibelius Museum in Turku on August 20 with a subsequent performance taking place at St. George's Bristol on September 22. Joseph Tong gives the London premiere of Five Trees at Wigmore Hall on November 25.

The twelve-minute piece is a response to Sibelius’s Five Pieces for Piano, The Trees (1914). As the title suggests Five Trees is made of five movements representing different British trees: The Oak, The Willow, The Scots Pine, The Apple, and The English Elm.

Matthews writes of the piece:

"[The movements] begin with ‘The Oak’, our national tree…[the tempo] is marked Maestoso – majestic – and begins with solemn chords, which are repeated in varied form at the end. Then comes ‘The Willow,’ perhaps our most graceful tree. It is a gentle Allegretto, whose starting point was the Willow Song from Shakespeare’s Othello…‘The Scots Pine’ has a deliberately Scottish flavor.

‘The Apple’ is a joyful scherzo. It was the last piece to be written, in April 2022, when I could experience the lovely apple blossom. Lastly ‘The English Elm’ begins with a lament for the death of almost all our elms from Dutch Elm Disease, which I witnessed myself in the 1970s.

This summer also saw the premiere of David Matthews’s Shiva Dances for string quartet and string orchestra at the Elgar Festival under Kenneth Woods in June. His Sonata for oboe and piano will be premiered by Nicholas Daniel and Huw Watkins at the Presteigne Festival on August 27, where, on August 30, pianist Tim Horton will premiere A Fugue for Hugh. Finally, Matthews’s String Quartet No.16 will receive its world premiere at the New Paths Music Festival in Beverley, Yorkshire, on September 29.

To learn more about David Matthews, visit: fabermusic.com.

David Matthews
Five Trees (2021-22)
for solo piano
12'

Shiva Dances (2022)
for string quartet and string orchestra
13'

String Quartet No. 16 (2022)
12'

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