Matthew Schellhorn
pianist
Matthew Schellhorn is a Messiaen specialist, so gifted in fact that the composer's wife Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, described him in 2005 as “an excellent pianist and an excellent exponent”, and praised his performances as “wonderful in every detail ... everything is played as Messiaen wanted it”. It's impossible to better such an endorsement of course, but his performances of the Préludes in this concert certainly confirmed it. What impressed more than anything was indeed the wealth of musical detail revealed by Matthew Schellhorn's playing. He clearly loves every note of the music and understands every element of its subtlety but his technique is also so assured (and so apparently effortless) that not a nuance was left unexpressed, not a silence given less than its due importance, not an emotional pivot-point neglected. Only a very few other pianists may interpret Messiaen more acutely than Matthew Schellhorn does just now. And this will soon change in his favour, I suspect.
Bill Kenny, MusicWeb International, November 2008
Those of us fortunate enough to attend a wealth of concerts all year round know that, once in a blue moon, usually quite without warning, we may experience a ‘pin-drop’ moment, when time seems to stand still. Composers rarely plan it that way. But Olivier Messiaen did. Stuck in a Silesian POW camp in 1940, he needed to dream. Himself a pianist, he found other inmates who played clarinet, violin and cello - and wrote his Quartet for the End of Time, now a 20th-century classic, based on the vision of the angel in the Book of Revelations. If Wednesday’s profoundly affecting account by the Chamber Players did not quite provide that glimpse of eternity, it came close, holding the audience spellbound. There was a placidity in the angel’s vocalise, on which clarinettist Peter Sparks capitalised in his supremely controlled solo, Abyss of the Birds. Elsewhere, too, it was the gently hovering movements - duos involving piano with violin or cello - rather than the jazzy or menacing dances that provided the cathartic purity for which Messiaen so brilliantly aimed. Earlier, Sarah Butcher had delivered a crisp, forthright account of Debussy’s Cello Sonata, with Matthew Schellhorn her attentive pianist. Sparks brought a spritely panache to Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for solo clarinet (1919), and Bartok’s Contrasts, with clarinet and piano led by Maya Magub’s agile violin, was especially effective in its terrifyingly devilish final dance. But the Messiaen was something else.
Martin Dreyer, The Press (York), May 2010
In 2006 Matthew Schellhorn gave a brilliantly successful all-Messiaen recital but artists who devote a programme to only one composer always leave the question of how they would fare with other music. On 7 May [at Wigmore Hall] Schellhorn fully responded to that query with a wide range of music. Again there was some Messiaen, an authoritative view being offered of the Petites esquisses d'oiseaux, yet before that he travelled from the simplicity of Daquin's Le Coucou to the contrasted sophistications of Rameau and Ravel with the unfamiliar Blackbird of Dutilleux as an addition. This latter was quite different from Le Merle noir of Messiaen’s cycle but like the rest was delivered with grace and a certain incisiveness. ... Ian Wilson’s Stations IV, a Schellhorn commission which received its world première ... was magnificently performed. ... Schellhorn ended with thoughtfully considered readings of Chopin's Three Nocturnes Op. 9 and the Scherzo Op. 54, the least often performed and most subtle of the composer's pieces in that genre. Juxtaposing early and late Chopin is often an effective programmatic idea and the rubato was beautifully judged, the piano tone as perfectly apt as in, say, Messiaen.
Max Harrison, Musical Opinion, July 2008
Messiaen was far from being the pioneer of notated birdsong. Matthew Schellhorn has devised a programme to illustrate the long tradition in which he stood, and as keeper of the flame Schellhorn's playing of Messiaen carries his tutor Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen’s enthusiastic approval and by playing a Fazioli (the Ferrari of the piano world) [at London's Wigmore Hall], he clearly meant business. ... With Ravel's Oiseaux tristes, Schellhorn was in his element, letting the pedalled chords float and calibrating the interplay between darkness and light with fastidious care. Dutilleux's Blackbird took flight with diamond brilliance, and then came Messiaen’s Little Bird Sketches, in which we could see why Loriod took such a shine to this pianist. Now, also, we saw the reason for the Fazioli: under Schellhorn’s expert hands, it perfectly answered Messiaen's insistence that each bird's ‘aesthetic’ should be reflected in tonal colour.
Michael Church, The Independent, 19 May 2008
An Enviable Technique
Matthew Schellhorn’s début recital at London's Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 7 May 2008 was a fascinating mixture of old and new. Schellhorn, a talented young pianist who has made Messiaen something of a speciality, chose a programme which ranged from Rameau and Daquin through to Ian Wilson and Messiaen, taking in Chopin, Mozart and Ravel on the way. Schellhorn opened with Mozart's Suite K399, in itself a work which looks both backward and forward. Mozart wrote it whilst under the influence of Handel, but failed to complete the final Sarabande which has been finished by Robert Levin. Schellhorn's performance was poised and displayed admirable clarity. He followed this with a fascinating sequence of bird-related pieces, playing Daquin's ‘Le Coucou’, Rameau's ‘Le Rappel des oiseau’, Dutilleux's Blackbird and Ravel's ‘Oiseaux tristes’ (from Miroirs) in quick succession. He completed the sequence with Messiaen's 1985 Petites esquisses d’oiseaux. Besides their subject matter, the thread of commonality that ran through the performances was Schellhorn's combination of clarity, sense of line and brilliant technique. He played the early pieces with a sense of clarity which was an admirable compromise between on the one hand trying to create a harpsichord sound on the piano and on the other ignoring the works' origins altogether and giving them modern, romantic gloss. In the Messiaen both Schellhorn and the piano really came into their own, the piano resonating Messiaen's complex chords in a magical way and adding to the dazzling clarity of Schellhorn's playing of the complex birdsong notation which forms the core of Messiaen's score. ... Schellhorn displayed an admirable control of sound and timbre and relished the dramatic contrasts which Wilson gave him, the piece concluding with a long sequence of tintinnabulation. ... This was a sequence of deeply felt performances ... a fine début recital from a talented pianist with an enviable technique...
Robert Hugill, www.mvdaily.com, May 2008
Matthew Schellhorn's total command of this virtuoso piano part was never more aptly apparent than in the cadenza at the end of ‘Joie du sang des étoiles’ [in Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie] - totally breathtaking! This was a special evening and one that all involved should be proud and hold dear to their hearts for a long time. A great achievement.
Malcolm Ball, www.oliviermessiaen.org, March 2008
Matthew Schellhorn's second concert on the venerable but splendid Blüthner in St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee, on Saturday was in part to demonstrate and exploit its potential. This it certainly did, in music of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. In Mozart's D major Sonata (K311) there was no doubting Schellhorn’s superb control and his mastery of phrase and tone, which does not come easily on an old piano. Mozart’s fun, wit and humour were aired as effectively as his elegance and charm. Schellhorn has made a special study of the late Olivier Messiaen... These difficult, evocative pieces were stunningly played, with the clarity that marks Schellhorn’s playing. A passionate Chopin’s Scherzo No 4 in E major as finale saw the piano take on a new warmth of tone.
Dundee Courier, October 2007
An interesting mixture of familiar and new music (including some previously unheard Messiaen) performed by promising young artists in the Jacqueline du Pré Concert Building [in Oxford] - the prospect was more than gratified. This was a wonderfully inspiring concert by two young consummate musicians totally in tune with each other and playing music that they clearly love. ... Matthew’s teaching by Messiaen's widow helped his understanding of this great composer. ... All in all this was a marvellous recital. ... One of the best concerts that I've ever been to!
David R. Dunsmore, MusicWeb International, June 2007
Although the season of Saturday lunch-time concerts in St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee, has only just started, the standard of performances is impressively high. Pianist Matthew Schellhorn continuted the trend with a terrific performance of ability, technique and, at times, notable power. ... Robert Schumann’s wonderful Carnaval, a glorious sequence of twenty-one musical caricatures, where brought to life in marvellous fashion by Matthew. This is a wonderful musical tapestry, and an interpretation such as Matthew’s made it utterly compelling.
Garry Fraser, Dundee Courier, January 2007
In works prompted by so many birds Messiaen did far more than reproduce the songs he so carefully notated. In both the music and his programme notes he described the surroundings at the various times of day that he heard them; and he included the songs of other birds who may also have been present. Whereas the Vingt Regards, his other great keyboard cycle, can be performed as a whole, that is impossible with the Catalogue d'oiseaux, his longest piece apart from St François d’Assise. Besides time, there are the extremes of virtuosity demanded. So on 6 April Matthew Schellhorn gave dazzling accounts of single items from Books 1, 2, 5 and 7, following after the interval with the grand Postscript of La Fauvette des jardins in which the songs of no less than 17 of the birds from the Catalogue are heard again. Schellhorn possesses a seemingly perfect and complete piano technique for such things and his readings, always vivid and dramatic, were deeply satisfying. Here, as in the rest of his output, Messiaen created a world of his own and though he was widely influential I cannot easily imagine music from other sources in a programme like this. Yet I should be interested, as a matter of curiosity, in hearing Schellhorn in quite different repertoire. How would he deploy his searching intelligence and magnificent technique in other causes?
Max Harrison, Musical Opinion, April 2006
[The Presteigne Festival] is not alone this year in celebrating the centenary of Michael Tippett’s birth, even if few performances elsewhere of his first two Piano Sonatas will match those by Matthew Schellhorn, who characterised their diverse materials with wonderful sharpness and stunning virtuosity.
Roger Nichols, Hereford Times, September 2005
Matthew Schellhorn is one of Britain’s most exciting young pianists - a brilliant musician.
Natalie Wheen, Classic FM, August 2005
A superb performance of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps was for me the highlight of the series. So well established in the repertoire as it is now, I greatly appreciated how fresh and devoid of routine their performance sounded, its true chamber music ethos characterised by intimacy and sensitivity rather than overprojection and individual display.
Andrew Thomson, Musical Times, November 2004
As the longest single span of music written by Messiaen for the piano, La Fauvette des jardins is an extraordinary challenge for any performer. At no point during Matthew Schellhorn’s stunning performance was there any hint of the fearsome difficulties posed by this music. Rather, as Messiaen wished, Schellhorn captured the distinct characters of each of the feathered protagonists, relishing the interplay and moments of drama between them. Crucially, he was able to convey a magnificent sense of space to Messiaen's canvass, so that the depictions of the ‘blue lake’ never felt hurried. This sense of calm, the ability to find a genuinely slow tempo even after several pages of high-octane, adrenaline-fuelled virtuosity, is the mark of a pianist in tune with Messiaen’s intentions. Add to that Schellhorn’s vibrant range of colour, thunderously resonating climaxes and some exquisite diminuendos that were judged to perfection and it is easy to see why this performance will remain a cherished memory for those privileged enough to experience it.
Christopher Dingle, BBC Music Magazine, July 2002
The programme pianist Matthew Schellhorn chose made heavy demands, all of which he could surmount. His technical skills were truly virtuosic, while his emotional stamina built an atmosphere of heart-breaking intensity. The last section of Scriabin's Ninth Sonata was executed brilliantly.
Malvern Gazette, August 2002
Tremendously lyrical playing. It was as if the heavens had opened and daylight had shone through the hall.
Maria Chiara Bonazzi, La Stampa, June 2001
