Renewal owes its origins to a remark I made at the pre-concert talk for the first performance, in the spring of 1992, of what has now become its third part.

I am borne on the boundless seas and have spread my sails to the winds: it is a joy to travel through the high stars. Both were neatly, if slightly reverentially, played, the Ländler a tad literal which belied its dance origins and lazy grace, and St Anthony’s sermon a little too severe for the passage marked Mit Humor to emerge fully That said, the pizzicato section towards the close of the Ländler and the final section of the succeeding movement were both wonderfully poetic and sensitive, the music at that point fading away and ushering in the Urlicht (Primal Light).This gave us the chance to welcome back the much loved mezzo Sarah Connolly who was on top form.

Colin Matthews Renewal (1991-6) Intrada Threnody Broken Symmetry Metamorphosis Renewal owes its origins to a remark I made at the pre-concert talk for the first performance, in the spring of 1992, of what has now become its third part.

For the most part tempos were similarly well chosen, for example, with a decisive lunge onward where Mahler marks Vorwärts (forwards) at various points in the first movement.Slightly less convincing were the tempos in the two succeeding movements, the second a Ländler which contains the injunction “never hurry” and the third, based on the Wunderhorn song about St Anthony of Padua’s sermon to the fishes, which is marked “in a peaceful flowing motion”. This elided seamlessly without any break into the Resurrection, an imaginative opener.Matthews’s work is for a very large orchestra and a rather smaller choir and is an impressive processional with shades of the atmosphere of the quieter sections of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. The all-persuasive C sharp of Broken Symmetry drops down a semitone to underpin Metamorphosis with deep pedal C. To follow such a manic scherzo with anything other than a mood of reflection seemed impossible, and though the textures are often complex, the music is hushed throughout, and for the most part tranquil. The evening opened with a performance of Metamorphosis, the concluding part of a larger work, Renewal, by Colin Matthews to words by the Latin poet Ovid reflecting the impermanence of all things.

Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony starts with a funeral march and finishes in a world reborn. I said then that I had thought of Broken Symmetry as perhaps the scherzo of a ‘mega-work’. Underpinning the rich stylistic diversity of Colin Matthews’s work is an unparalleled sense of architecture, combining a forensic attention to detail with a lucid sense of overall form. For the most part it is slow, quiet and reflective as one would expect with a text dwelling on the fact that “All things are changed” (omnia mutantur) and “Nothing in the whole world endures unchanged” (nil est quod perstet toto in orbe), but occasionally flares up into unexpected outbursts.

This culminates in a gentle coda for the chorus (‘cernis et emensas in lucem tendere noctes’), before a postlude which is rooted to the C of the opening: as if an echo of all that has gone before, though hugely simplified. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Both soloists, Sarah Connolly now joined by the soprano Sofia Fomina, were self-effacing but outstandingly sensitive as they emerged from (but did not dominate) the texture; they had both sat immobile immediately in front of the organ since the arrival of the full choir at the end of the first movement, an elegant solution to the usual problem of when to bring on the soloists without disrupting the performance.

Intrada is the shortest of the four parts, lasting some 8 minutes only. From 1983 till 1998, Knussen was an Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival, and also held posts at the Tanglewood Music Center and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. This was riveting and all the more welcome since really good mezzos are in short supply.The huge final movement opens with a seismic cataclysm but thereafter – at least in some hands – the journey to the concluding Resurrection can seem a long one.