Matteo: 300 Years of an Italian Cello

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Haimovitz interweaves Gabrielli’s Ricercari with music from Italy’s leading contemporary composers.

Matt Haimovitz’s Venetian cello was made by Matteo Gofriller in 1710, ten years before J. S. Bach put pen to paper for his six solo cello suites. Domenico Gabrielli’s seven Ricercari, the direct precursors to Bach’s masterpieces, may have been the first notes heard on this extraordinary instrument.

Three hundred years later on Matteo, Haimovitz interweaves Gabrielli’s Ricercari with music from Italy’s leading contemporary composers, including Luciano Berio, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Giacinto Scelsi, as well as premiere recordings of works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Claudio Ambrosini, and Montreal composer Brian Cherney.

Traversing three centuries of solo cello music, Haimovitz draws the full breadth of possibilities from his cello, an instrument that has graced the stages of Carnegie Hall and CBGB. Matteo is an album to delight fans of Haimovitz’s solo Bach performances and recordings, as well as those who have been thrilled by his modern interpretations on Deutsche Grammophon, Oxingale Records, and in concert.

Gramaphone review:

“A Fabergé egg of musical delights. Six of Domenico Gabrielli’s profoundly beautiful Ricercars interweave with responses by a quartet of Italian composers and the Canadian Brian Cherney, all of which confirm the breathtaking 21st-century immediacy of the remote Venetian instrument. If you have great speakers and can turn the volume up late at night , you will be transfixed by the things a cello named Matteo plus a cellist named Matt can do.”