Cellist Matthias Balzat: representing the music with an open heart
Cellist Matthias Balzat
Photo credit: Miclen Laipang
New Zealand cellist Matthias Balzat has never forgotten his first lesson with James Tennant, Head of Cello Studies at the Conservatorium of Music of the University of Waikato in Hamilton. Balzat, who’d been learning the cello with Sally-Anne Brown in Auckland, was 11 years old and took some music by Bach to play to his new teacher. Tennant began to demonstrate on his cello and said, “I’m not going to stop playing till you put your cello down and start dancing.” “I think,” says Balzat now, “that he was trying to get me to be more dance-like in my playing. It was a big moment of embarrassment, but set in stone a very personal relationship with Jim. I stayed with him for the next seven years.”
This month, Balzat returns to New Zealand from Germany for a concert tour, including to three concerts with Hamilton’s Opus Orchestra. We talked recently about his early years growing up in Auckland in an intensely musical household. The youngest of seven children, he remembers “there wasn’t an hour of the day when music wasn’t being played. Early morning scales and études through till one in the morning with my brother in the music room playing the piano and singing. Everyone had an instrument, so it was completely natural for me to do what everyone else did.”
It was his sister closest in age, Marika, who was supposed to be the cellist, and Balzat laughs when he recounts his mother’s initial approach to cello teacher Brown. The latter suggested that, at four, the little girl was probably “too old to begin”, and so the instrument was reserved for her younger brother. As a 3-year-old, he began learning the cello through the Suzuki Method - which he describes as “fantastic, training your ears before your eyesight, and learning how to listen” - while Marika joined her three older sisters on violin.
The household played as a family band, mostly Celtic and Irish fiddle music, “all put together,” says Balzat, “by my mother, who didn’t grow up with music but ended up studying piano at Auckland University.” Like his siblings, he was home-schooled for most of his education, going into year 12 at Wentworth College in Auckland aged just 13 to gain credits for university entrance, and then moving to Hamilton aged 14 to start university studies. These included continuing his cello studies with Tennant, and he graduated with his Bachelor of Music aged 17.
Cellist Matthias Balzat
“…there was nothing better for me to do than become further involved in this world of music.”
Photo credit: Charles Brooks
Balzat speaks modestly about his successes as a young musician, but he was clearly a prodigy, winning numerous competitions and prizes. An early watershed moment came in his teens when he was part of a piano trio that won the NZCT Secondary Schools Chamber Music Contest, a competition now almost 60 years old that has provided early chamber music experiences to many of New Zealand’s musical stars. For Balzat, it was the music itself that made it memorable.
“We performed Shostakovich’s 2nd Piano Trio,” he tells me, “the very first piece I’d played that had such emotional and contextual depth. We put our hearts into it. That experience was so intense, and so intensely rewarding, that winning the competition was just the cherry on top, confirmation of our hard work. From that moment, I was certain there was nothing better for me to do than become further involved in this world of music.”
The same year, 2014, he won the New Zealand National Concerto Competition for musicians aged 25 and under. “That year was an overwhelming experience and launched me into the direction of my life. The Concerto Competition win allowed me to join the solo class of James Tennant. I moved to Hamilton and studied there for four years.”
Balzat gives Tennant a lot of credit for lighting his passion for music. “If you were ever comfortable with the music you were playing, it was never enough for Jim, there was always more to be found out.” He’s also grateful for the “huge workload” and amount of repertoire he was required to learn in Tennant’s solo class. “That’s been unbelievably useful for launching into the professional world.”
Armed with numerous scholarships and other support, Balzat moved to Germany for Master’s studies at the Robert Schumann Hochschule für Musik in Düsseldorf, where his teacher is the world-renowned Pieter Wispelwey. A month after arrival at the School, he won an internal school concerto competition. The prize provided concerto performances with the Hochschule orchestra in two prestigious German concert halls, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf and the Historische Stadthalle (Historic Town Hall) in Wuppertal. “Simon Rattle,” Balzat tells me, “described the Wuppertal hall as one of the most incredible he’s ever performed in - and I have to agree. I played Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations there and have never experienced such grandeur in a concert hall from the perspective of a soloist.”
Historische Stadthalle in Wuppertal, Germany
Photo taken during set-up for Matthias Balzat’s performance of Rococo Variations in 2019
It was that same famous work of Tchaikovsky’s for cello and orchestra that Balzat played when he was last soloist with Opus Orchestra in 2017. That was the year he won for a second time the New Zealand National Concerto Competition, impressing the judges with a dazzling performance of Shostakovich’s 1st Cello Concerto. Now, he’s about to join Opus again as concerto soloist in Hamilton, Rotorua and Tauranga. This time he’s chosen Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps’s 1st Cello Concerto, a work Balzat describes as having “a lovely balance of simplicity, virtuosity and romanticism.” Vieuxtemps was also a virtuoso on violin and Balzat, always interested in exploring technical possibilities, is fascinated by this aspect of the work. He hears the influence of Robert Schumann, too, in the lyricism of what he describes as a profound composition.
His Master’s degree in Düsseldorf now completed, Balzat is able to continue working at the Hochschule with Wispelwey for a two-year “concert exam” degree, a solo class with limited entry. Two final concerts are the only formal course requirement; the student is required to continue lessons with their professor, while undertaking performing projects and building their career. “It’s amazing; perfect for me,” he says. “And I can come to New Zealand for these concerts in the middle of the semester.”
Cellist Matthias Balzat playing in a chamber ensemble
at the Aula Magna dell'Universita La Sapienza in Rome, Italy in 2022
He laughs when I ask about his relationship to his cello, an instrument Balzat has described in his quirkily-written biography as his “weapon of choice”. “There’s no one answer to that. It’s a companion, one I’ve been carrying around wherever I travel. And music is more a language to me than English itself; I’m more intimate with music and the cello, it’s a very special connection.” But a battle? “When you go on stage, it’s a new world that you never go to in practice. You’re not fighting the instrument or the audience but yourself – it’s a fight for expression and discovery.”
This deeply thoughtful musician also believes the bow is hugely important to a string player. “It’s an extension of the arm, without which no sound would be produced. When playing, so many of our instincts are involved with the left hand, the intonation, getting the notes right. Yet all of that is superfluous without the bow.”
What is he hoping to communicate to the audience? “My relationship to music is empathy; I’m not creating something but associating memories and emotions to a piece of music, a story the composer has already written. You need to approach the music with an open heart and and an open mind - and optimism, looking for the best in it. That’s my job, representing the music.”
Upcoming New Zealand performances by cellist Matthias Balzat:
Opus Orchestra ‘Joie de Vivre’ Hamilton, Rotorua and Tauranga May 24-26, more information and tickets here
St Matthews Chamber Orchestra ‘Cello Romance’ Auckland 16 June, more information here
Nelson Centre for Musical Arts Matthias Balzat: solo recital and C P E Bach’s Cello Concerto with Nelson Symphony Orchestra 20-22 June, more information here
Matthias Balzat Cellist, Duo recitals, music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Fisher, Boulanger and Balzat Hamilton 29 May, Auckland 4 June, Queenstown 28 June, more information here