William Mathias. Photo: John Ross
During his own lifetime, William Mathias enjoyed a good deal of success as a composer.
The recipient of numerous awards, he was also a committed educator and his dedication to music-making in Wales can be seen most prominently in the North Wales International Music Festival which he began in 1972. The festival continues to run successfully every September based at St Asaph, where Mathias is buried.
I admire Mathias a great deal; I think he was quite a remarkable character and his output was both prolific and exceptionally broad. He most definitely had his own musical voice, something that comes across very clearly in each of his works.
His music always has a rhythmic buoyancy, with lots of dance-like inflections, and although he had a brief flirtation with serialism (music based on the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, but not in an actual key), his music is generally diatonic (based in the major/minor keys). In short, it is very pleasing on the ear.
We first performed Mathias’ Violin Concerto with Matthew Trusler at the North Wales International Music Festival in September 2013. In it, Mathias’ repetition of small motivic ideas (brief, easily recogniseable rhythms or short melodic patterns) becomes a vehicle for carrying musical line and tension.
In the violin concerto I discovered much deeper musical expression than I normally associated with Mathias’ music. I’m quite surprised this work has not been included in the BBC Proms before, but it is with great pleasure that we will give the work its London premiere, with Matthew again as the soloist in this year’s Proms season.
The Violin Concerto was composed for György Pauk in 1992. It is a substantial work, lasting around 38 and consisting of four movements. Just to give you some reference to how it sounds musically - to me, it sounds as though Prokofiev and Shostakovich had gone on a Celtic get away together, although the musical language remains steadfastly Mathias’.
Matthew Trusler. Photo: Sheila Rock
We often mistakenly think of music from the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st as being difficult for the untrained ear to attune to. While it is true that many of the modern schools of composition can take the listener far outside of their comfort zone, Mathias’ music is exceptionally accessible; he believed in simple melody and harmony because he knew his audience could relate to it.
To quote Geraint Lewis’ obituary for Mathias (first published in The Independent on 31st July 1992), Mathias ‘sought clarity of expression above everything else and he wanted his work to be useful and meaningful.’ I think the violin concerto is a meaningful work, and over the course of this last season, I’ve also discovered Mathias’ Piano Concerto No 3, and his Harp Concerto - works that I also think are fantastic pieces, and deserving of a much wider listening.
Mathias’ Violin Concerto is a work that deserves a wide hearing and I hope that in the years to come more violinists will include it in their repertoire. We hope that its Proms performance will bring it to a much wider audience as we include it in a programme alongside Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot Overture and Elgar’s glorious first symphony. We wish Matthew all the very best for his Proms debut and look forward to taking to the stage with him.
Listen to BBC NOW’s Prom on Wednesday 6 August live on BBC Radio 3 from 7.30pm.
Tickets are available from the Royal Albert Hall or Prom on the day for £5
