Interviews - 18.07.2022
Ticking off the bucket list
“When we are listening to music, especially for the very first time, we start thinking about it. ‘Here these bits sound like that or this reminds me of something.’ That puts our thoughts between us and the music. Real deep listening is really concentrating on keeping yourself in that moment.” ~ Matthew Barley
It’s not often in classical music that soloists get to speak with the composer at length before embarking on their first performance of a concerto, but that’s exactly what English cellist Matthew Barley did.
Prior to flying to Ōtautahi Christchurch for a performance of Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul, Barley had the inimitable opportunity to speak with Golijov over Zoom.
“[Golijov and I] have a mutual friend, the director Sally Potter, and she organised a Zoom with Osvaldo where I just grilled him for an hour,” said Barley. “There are several passages in Azul that call for some improvisation and he said to me, ‘Please make this piece your own’.”
Well-known for his improvisation, Barley will be performing the concerto (originally written for renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma) with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, 30 July, in Lamb & Hayward Masterworks: Pastoral.
He’d been determined to play Azul ever since hearing the recording five years ago, and was “instantly bowled over”. It’s the last piece in his “bucket list” of concertos, and he had been scheduled to perform the concerto three times; in Canada, London, and Christchurch. Unfortunately, the first two performances were cancelled. “Luckily, CSO held firm and I’m performing it for the first time.”
To first time listeners of the concerto, he advised “deep listening”, which actually is the same answer he gives whenever he talks about people listening to any piece of music for the first time.
“When we are listening to music, especially for the very first time, we start thinking about it. ‘Here these bits sound like that or this reminds me of something.’ That puts our thoughts between us and the music. Real deep listening is really concentrating on keeping yourself in that moment.”
Barley was a late starter to the cello, having first started his musical studies on the piano when he was five years old. “My piano teacher called my parents and told them they were wasting their money because I was completely unmusical,” he recalled.
He stopped doing music for a couple of years but, when he was seven, he saw someone playing the cello and said to his mum, “I want to do that.” As luck would have it, his school was offering free cello lessons. He doesn’t remember saying it, but his mother remembered that “within three weeks, I declared that I was becoming a professional cellist.” He hadn’t ever thought about doing anything else since that moment.
In a sense, Pastoral might be as close to perfection as a concert could get for Barley, as, alongside his last ‘bucket list’ concerto, it ends in the sixth symphony of one of his favourite composers, Beethoven.
During the lockdowns in the UK, he read five Beethoven biographies. “Beethoven’s the number one man for me for a whole host of reasons,” he said. Barley is also a great admirer of many living composers, and definitely counts Osvaldo Golijov among his top five.