Press & Reviews
Ainadamar (Golijov) 2023
“Conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren presided over the rich musical mix with great skill, drawing first-class playing from the WNO Orchestra.”
Musical America
“the conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren does a superb job in capturing its melting pot of potent emotions and rich cultural influences”
The Times
“But it was the music, interpreted with urgency and flair by the WNO orchestra, conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, that gave that sense of healing and comfort.”
Nation Cymru
The Pearl Fishers (Bizet) 2023
“There is some luscious playing in the orchestra, conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, not least from the harp. The recurrence of the duet melody, in its various guises, floats in and out of the action like a memory, a reminder.”
The Opera Critic
“Matthew Kofi Waldren and his band eve out every fleck of colour from Bizet’s score.”
The Times
“under Matthew Kofi Waldren’s baton the Orchestra of Opera North sounded magnificent and did him and it proud.”
The Arts Desk
Blue (Tesori) 2023
“a conductor at the top of his game…attentivenot only to his singers but wringing everything he could from Tesori’s score; the ENO Orchestra responded in kind”
Seen and Heard
“masterfully written and performed, with Matthew Kofi Waldren making space for the swell of Jeanine Tesori’s score, and for the quiet moments where every word needed to be heard.”
Opera Now
“Matthew Kofi Waldren conducts, complete master of all the score’s many musical genres, and with the Orchestra of English National Opera on top form, right down to the growliest contrabassoon.”
Culture Whisper
The Chevalier (Bologne) 2023
“The LPO - presided over by conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren - was on ravishing form, managing to convey the chattering class sophistication and lurking anger in Bologna’s work.”
The Arts Desk
Migrations (Todd) 2022
“This work represents revolutionary operatic theater…It could very well reframe how opera is created going forward…Perhaps one of the most neo-Wagnerian works staged in some time…Conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren, director Sir David Pountney, composer and jazz pianist Will Todd, and six brilliant librettists were at the forefront of the collaborative giant.”
Opera Wire
“With some 100 people on stage and some 60 instrumentalists in the pit, conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren is in secure musical charge of this vast enterprise. It’s an ambitious project that will undoubtedly have achieved many of its goals as well as showing WNO at its best.”
The Stage
La petite bohème (Puccini) 2020
“Throughout the Opera North Orchestra is alert and responsive to conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren’s direction of the opulent score. At all times, there is a natural pace set for the singers, even in the agitated passages portraying the lovers’ arguments, whereby musical phrasing is neither hurried nor exhausting. Particularly fine work comes from the woodwind solos of the first desk flute, oboe and clarinet.”
Leeds Living
Un ballo in maschera (Verdi) 2019
“Waldren is proving himself one of the most adept and dynamic young British Verdians.”
The Sunday Times
“Conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren puts the City of London Sinfonia absolutely at the heart of Verdi’s scheming and yearning. There’s a spare, skeletal beauty to his Prelude, icy violin broken chords chilling the warmth of the cellos, and this spiky unease runs right through the performance, the music never fully surrendering or releasing into amorous comfort. The opening chords of Act I Scene II ring out like gunshots, and the chorus achieve a subtler menace in a magnificent final scene.”
The Arts Desk