Dates

• Existence: 1946-

Biography

Colin Matthews (b. 1946) is a composer with a scholarly interest in the music of Mahler and Britten. In his teens he made contact with Deryck Cooke after hearing the latter's 'performing version' of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony on the radio. For more than a decade Matthews (along with his composer brother David and the composer-conductor Berthold Goldschmidt) assisted Cooke in the task of creating a convincingly Mahlerian orchestration for the uncompleted work. Cooke's final version of the score appeared in 1976, shortly before his death; but the Matthews brothers have continued to make small changes since that time. After Cooke's death, Colin Matthews was involved in the posthumous publication of various Cooke articles, talks and books. Deryck Cooke (1919-76) was educated at Cambridge (his study being interrupted by war service) and then went to the BBC, where he worked for most of his life. A highly prominent broadcaster and writer in the musical circles of the time, he made contributions to the study of Wagner, Mahler, Delius and Bruckner, among others. His best-known achievement is his edition of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony: not a 'completion', but a 'performing version' of the draft as Mahler left it.

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