4 October 2018
Scottish Ensemble (SE): What’s your favourite venue to play?
Matthew: That’s a tricky one – there have been quite a few memorable ones, all for different reasons, but I think if I had a favourite, it has to be the Laieszhalle in Hamburg. It’s the most perfect acoustic and it’s one of the venues where Maria Callas was filmed singing.
SE: What is/are your favourite piece(s) to play?
Matthew: I have to confess, that Mozart clarinet quintet comes pretty much top of my list, but that’s maybe too predictable. I’m a great fan of both Sibelius and Stravinsky. Always thrilled to play anything by either of them. This summer I played in a performance of Sibelius’ fifth symphony. There are few pleasures like filling your lungs and playing the swans’ airborne melody over a section of horns as they take over the bass line and that motif gets given the crown it’s being pining for.
SE: What’s been the best moment of your career so far?
Matthew: These are tricky questions! I do however remember a Schubert octet at Wigmore Hall with the one and only Pekka Kuusisto that’s gonna take a lot of beating.
SE: What’s been the biggest challenge?
Matthew: This year, playing Magnus Lindberg’s clarinet concerto in Bogotá at 3000m altitude. Deep breaths and fast fingers.
SE: Do you have any pre-concert concert rituals?
Matthew: I always worry that my clarinet reed is either too young and not blown in or is about to die. Wind players and their reeds have complicated relationships.
SE: What are the best things about being on tour?
Matthew: Going for amazing meals around the world with my friends.
SE: What are the worst things about being on tour?
Matthew: Aside from going for bad meals around the world without any friends, not sleeping in my own bed.
SE: What’s the first thing you do when you get home from tour?
Matthew: Have a soak in the bath with a book having played my beautiful 6’3” Blüthner grand piano whilst the bath was running.
SE: If you hadn’t become a musician, what do you think you’d be doing now?
Matthew: I’d be perfecting the perfect stuffed pasta recipe, which would very likely comprise squash, butter and sage.
SE: Where in the world would you most like to live?
Matthew: Ferrara in Italy – the stuffed pumpkin cappellacci with butter and sage are too good not to live there.
