I knew Matthew for some twenty years. He was at BBC Music Magazine when I arrived in the early 2000s, an unassuming fount of wisdom with a gentle sense of humour, with a generosity of spirit that went beyond music – when he discovered we had a shared for plants, he encouraged me to visit Madeira, where he and David had a house. The massed agapanthus and the scent of the laurel forests remain wondrously vivid in my mind to this day. And he was kind enough to invite me to write for his ambitious tome, ‘1001 Classical Recordings’. More recently we’d bump into one another at concerts. A year ago I became The Strad’s reviews editor, a job he’d had a few years earlier. The circle was now complete, as I found myself commissioning him. And I always looked forward to his reviews, as quietly perceptive as the friend we’ve lost. 

Harriet