November 27, 2006
The things Matthew Barley does to a cello are possibly wrong (at least if you're the sort of classical music lover who likes it stiff, prim and unmixed with other kinds of music) but they feel so right it's a revelation. As part of his 30-date "On the Road" nationwide tour – concerts in the evenings, workshops in schools and nursing homes in the daytime – he played a storming show to a full house at the Jacqueline Du Pré Building last night.
Barley clearly loves what he does. He often appears lost in the music. He plays wildly and passionately, but you never feel he's lost control. The show, conceived as a journey from the earliest written melodies to modern electronic music, opened with improvisation influenced by Syrian folk music and Gregorian chant. We also heard a gypsy music-inspired piece by Kodály full of surprising twists and turns, and a Bach suite – giving an amazing intensity to music which in less skilled hands can sound mechanical. In the second half, after a suite by Britten, came two pieces with electronic accompaniment built up from backing tracks which Barley layered upon each other live on stage using foot pedals. Constant Filter was a spacious, richly textured piece with synthesiser tracks by John Metcalfe over which Barley played simple, beautiful musical phrases. The show closed with Vanishing Tracks, another improvisation based on the same music as the opener, but this time with beats, bass lines and lush electronic arrangements by dance and ambient producer DJ Bee. The backing tracks mixed and built in intensity, Barley's music building with it until by the end he was what can only be described as rocking out.
There was humour as well as passion. A watch beeped twice somewhere in the audience near the start of the first piece with electronic backing tracks, and Barley (with a huge grin) incorporated the beeps into his improvisation, with his fingers as high as they would go on the top string. As a fan of electronic music I worried that the rest of the audience might find him too unconventional, but their rapturous applause (three curtain calls!) proved otherwise. For me, and it seemed for many others, this evening was a refreshing and joyous reminder of what classical music can be if it's played with love and an open mind.
Barley clearly loves what he does. He often appears lost in the music. He plays wildly and passionately, but you never feel he's lost control. The show, conceived as a journey from the earliest written melodies to modern electronic music, opened with improvisation influenced by Syrian folk music and Gregorian chant. We also heard a gypsy music-inspired piece by Kodály full of surprising twists and turns, and a Bach suite – giving an amazing intensity to music which in less skilled hands can sound mechanical. In the second half, after a suite by Britten, came two pieces with electronic accompaniment built up from backing tracks which Barley layered upon each other live on stage using foot pedals. Constant Filter was a spacious, richly textured piece with synthesiser tracks by John Metcalfe over which Barley played simple, beautiful musical phrases. The show closed with Vanishing Tracks, another improvisation based on the same music as the opener, but this time with beats, bass lines and lush electronic arrangements by dance and ambient producer DJ Bee. The backing tracks mixed and built in intensity, Barley's music building with it until by the end he was what can only be described as rocking out.
There was humour as well as passion. A watch beeped twice somewhere in the audience near the start of the first piece with electronic backing tracks, and Barley (with a huge grin) incorporated the beeps into his improvisation, with his fingers as high as they would go on the top string. As a fan of electronic music I worried that the rest of the audience might find him too unconventional, but their rapturous applause (three curtain calls!) proved otherwise. For me, and it seemed for many others, this evening was a refreshing and joyous reminder of what classical music can be if it's played with love and an open mind.