Score and parts for hire

Reflected Images is a single 12-13 minute work, divided into four parts of roughly equal length which play without a break. All four parts are inter-related, and might be thought of as four different ways of looking at the same thing, although all are in some way elusive, almost as if what is being looked at is seen out of the corner of the eye. The concept, although definitely not the content, of the individual parts has been influenced by my recent work on Debussy's Preludes, and each section has a title, although it is, like Debussy's, not revealed until the end. The titles (or perhaps it would be better to call them afterthoughts) are: Distant Waltz, Past March, Present Recitative and Future Movement.

Colin Matthews

 ‘The whole piece seems to exist on its own terms. Interesting music, this, and I think likely to last.’
San Francisco Classical Voice (Michelle Dulak), 4 October 2003

‘There was no denying the British composer's mastery of the orchestra and of a certain fragrant, Debussyan sensitivity… Reflected Images unfolds in four brief, connected movements: a shadowy, distant waltz followed by a shadowy, distant march, then a somewhat more urgent recitative for strings and a quick, light-footed finale. The writing is terse, elegant and shapely, especially in Matthews' ability to conjure up elusive fog banks of sound from which individual details -- the oom-pah-pah rhythms of the ghostly waltz, for instance -- emerge fleetingly. In the march movement, tiny snippets of melody burst forth from the woodwinds before subsiding, like dark, slender logs sticking above the surface of a placid lake.’
San Francisco Chronnicle (​Joshua Kosman), 4 October 2003