Terrible Beauty, Op.104

Category		Vocal
Composed		2006-2007
Duration (approx)		12 minutes
Parts		Medium voice, flute, clarinet, harp, string quartet
Text Author(s)		Homer, William Shakespeare
Text Language		English/Greek
Recording(s)		Winter Passions
Publisher		Faber Music
Commission		Nash Ensemble
First performance		6 March 2007
Venue		Wigmore Hall, London
Orchestra / Ensemble		Nash Ensemble
Conductor		Lionel Friend
Soloists / Players		Susan Bickley (mezzo-soprano)
Review		Hilary Finch, The Times, 8 March 2006
		David Matthews’ Terrible Beauty for mezzo-soprano (Susan Bickley), flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet, is both more substantial and more searching. A Nash Ensemble commission with Arts Council funds, it is a beautifully wrought operatic scena. Bickley’s mezzo moved ardently between supple recitative and sensuous arioso as she gave voice to Enobarbus’s great Antony and Cleopatra. The instrumental playing seemed to echo both the light dancing metre of the Greek preface (an extract from Homer’s Iliad), and to re-create the oscillation of water and oar-strokes in a shimmering, harpgilded bacarolle.