To date David Matthews (b. 1943) has written seven symphonies and eleven string quartets. ‘I have continued’, he explains, ‘along a path similar to that taken by Tippett and Britten: one rooted in the Viennese Classics – Beethoven above all – and also in Mahler, Sibelius and the early twentieth-century modernists. I have always been a tonal composer, attempting to integrate the musical language of the present with the past, and to explore the rich traditional forms.’ This first volume of his complete string quartets presents works written between 1981 and 2001.

He takes his place in the mainstream of western classical music: ‘I have continued along a path similar to that taken by Tippett and Britten: one rooted in the Viennese Classics – Beethoven above all – and also in Mahler, Sibelius and the early twentieth-century modernists’.

The music on this CD is powerful but approachable: ‘I have always been a tonal composer, attempting to integrate the musical language of the present with the past, and to explore the rich traditional forms.’

This first volume of his complete string quartets presents works written between 1981 and 2001.