Three Hopkins Sonnets, a new triptych of songs from David Matthews, will premiere with Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton on 19 June at Leeds Conservatoire. The 7 ½-minute cycle sets poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It was commissioned by Leeds Song in honour of Kathleen Evans BEM and the remarkable contribution she has made to the charity over the years, as both administrator and, since 2017, Chair. “Every piece has special meaning for me”, said Evans of the celebration, titled Kathleen’s Songbook, “and the addition of David Matthews’s settings…will make the evening one to savour.”
Evans was behind the choice of poems for the cycle; their contrasting moods make a striking set. Matthews’ music follows the strong contrasts between the opening eight lines of each sonnet and succeeding sextet. The Windhover, one of Hopkins’ most ecstatic poems, is inspired by the sighting of a Kestrel – a bird that, remarkably, Matthews himself spotted on the Kent coast on the day he finished the song. It evokes the flight of the bird in superb detail, which hovers before plunging down on its prey. The Candle Indoors is a reflective, meditative contrast, ruminating on a passage from The Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of St Matthew. The finale, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, is initially exultant and joyous, before settling into more contemplative hymn-like mood for its close.
Hopkins’ poems have previously inspired choral works by Matthews. In 1997 Matthews set Hurrahing in Harvest for six solo voices – an elated encounter with the autumn landscape, premiered by Robert Hollingworth and I Fagiolini. In 1995 Hopkins’ Sky opened Moments of Vision, a cycle of six short unaccompanied vocal works that also set poems by Geoffrey Hill, Thomas Hardy, Keats, D.H. Lawrence, and Edward Thomas – several written as gifts to fellow composers, including Nicholas Maw, Peter Sculthorpe, and Hugh Wood.
In 2021 Sarah Connolly premiered Matthews’ chamber reduction of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with the BBC Philharmonic and Martyn Brabbins; Matthews’ intimate arrangement captures and condenses the anguished and fantastical atmosphere in Mahler’s settings of Rückert and showcases his remarkable affinity for song.