Born in Canberra, Australia, Matthew McDonald studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Max McBride and Kees Boersma. He received a scholarship to study at the Karajan Academy in Berlin with Klaus Stoll as his mentor. Afterward, he became Assistant Principal Bass with the Danish National Radio Symphony in Copenhagen.
Matthew returned to Berlin to study with Esko Laine at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ and joined the Ensemble Modern for three years. He has since held Principal Bass positions with Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Berlin and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin and joined the Berlin Philharmonic in January 2009.
Jason sat down with Matthew for an in-depth interview on his career and musical approach. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Let folks know a little bit about your first years in music. What was your first musical instrument?
When I was very little, I played the violin kind of terribly in a Suzuki group, and then we moved to analog.
So then I stopped, and then when I was about 12, I started up again with violin, but I never practiced it. I hated it. And, but they had this kind of violin group at lunchtime, I think it was Thursdays, one o’clock or something like that. And I was put in the third violin. The teacher said we need the strongest players in the third violin.
I didn’t even believe it then. But there was this other guy, another really apparently very strong player in the third violins who played bass lines on his violin. I asked him what that was, and he told me what it was, and then he showed me he had a bass guitar and played double bass.
And then that was it. I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I want to play bass. Originally, I wanted to do rock and jazz. So, over the summer, I practiced, got an electric bass, and borrowed a double bass. And then, I worked on it by myself over the summer. Then started having real lessons, and I was given a bow.
I was disappointed to get another bow. I thought I was leaving all that violin stuff behind me. I would’ve been about 15 then. Half a year later, I was already playing in youth orchestras. I started to love it. And then I was very lucky. After a year, I went to one of Australia’s finest bass players, Max McBride.
I got into the preliminary studies course at the Canberra School of Music. So, for the last two years of school, I was going to a preliminary studies course, having lessons with Max, doing theory and history, playing in string groups, and playing orchestras. It just took off straight away.
Being in Canberra, there’s quite a lot going on, but not enough bass players. And so, in a way, just having an instrument was enough to get a gig somewhere. I had lots of experience very young, so I think that was really good. I had a great education.
What was it like going to Sydney after that? Because Sydney’s such a cosmopolitan city.
Yeah, eventually, I’d had enough. I’d been traveling around, I’d been to Europe, and I’d been to a number of calls, and I’d had enough camps. I went to Sydney and studied with Kees Boersma, who’s principal in the Sydney Symphony. It was what I needed.
I needed a big city. It was so much fun. I played a lot in the Sydney Symphony and did many gigs, and I love the city. So many great beaches. Very kind of hedonistic time in a way. Just unique beaches, parties. It was just a great time and a great place to study.
What was it like playing in that opera house? It’s one of the most iconic buildings in the world.
Yeah, it’s incredible. It’s something you never get sick of. Yeah. And I remember Kees telling me that at the time, as you walk along the promenade towards the opera house, you’ve got it in view and the harbor bridge to the left and the big sky and bright sun blade, and it’s just overwhelming view.
You never ever get used to it. Every morning or every afternoon or anything going there was amazing. But just walking up there and just working in this building, as you said, with which tourists are taking pictures. It’s a really cool experience.
You did a year in the orchestra academy in Berlin. What was that experience like? That must have been quite a contrast.
I think I just finished doing a lot of playing with the Sydney Symphony, and I’ve been playing a lot in orchestra. And then I got off the plane in Berlin.
I went and stayed with a friend or something and saw the guy in the bass section, the organizer, and he said, “Oh, can you play next week?” It’s Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. I freaked out in a way. And then I had to learn quickly to play on a monster-sized five-string.
I’ve played five strings before, but the ones that the Phil owns, most of them are quite big, and everyone plays on five-string double basses. I couldn’t understand how people were getting so much sound out of them because the more kind of vertical pressure you put into it, the less the bass wanted to give back. I couldn’t understand it at the beginning.
The rehearsals were great. It’s so easy to play in the orchestra. It’s basically together because it’s a strong chamber music approach. So, in a way, it was liberating because it was just so easy. Things didn’t fall apart or something like that. But then I’ll never forget the first concert when everything was softer or louder than we’d rehearsed it.
The rehearsals are more or less, you do some good work, but it was the first time I’d experienced such a big difference between concert and rehearsal. The concerts weren’t just something where you hoped they would go, as well as the rehearsals. Everything was different. Dynamics and the energy and everything gained so much more intensity. That was an incredible experience.
That’s interesting that there’d be that difference. That’s one of those hallmarks of the great orchestras you hear about.
It was really scary because in rehearsal, the beginning of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, I thought, “Yeah, this is all fine.”
And then suddenly, on stage, I thought I was the only one who could be heard. It was just so much softer.
It’s such a different experience, the energy of an orchestra going out there with this real desire to perform. I’m not a surfer, but I can imagine it’s like surfing on a good wave or something. It was exhilarating!
What did you have to do technically to open up the sound on those five-string basses once you got to Berlin? What’d you do in your technique to get that sound?
The orchestra strings use a lot of bow. What it took me a while to get to comprehend was using a lot of bow but with constant contact. I tried to use a lot of bow; all it produced was a fluffy sound.
Maintaining constant contact through a big and fast bow. That is a lot of work. Also, there’s more total physicality in the bow. Some people don’t move so much. Some people move quite a lot. I think before my concept of bow stroke had been, maybe thinking about it from the wrist, the fingers, maybe the forearm, and that was about it.
And then people kept talking about the sound coming from the back and almost the full body. So trying to understand that. And then I did a lot of mimicking. I would look in the mirror, trying to find parts of each player in the section of that bow stroke, of how they appear, and then try to let my body copy it and feel what they’re feeling.
The biggest thing that helped was just after the academy, coupled with lessons with a viola teacher and basically focusing on the principle of starting a note. We spent a month on that twice weekly, just starting a note. Relaxing the arm and starting the note. And then I found once I had that under control, it was a lot easier to get through the whole bow with constant contact and a constant sound, which is so important for legato.
Getting those huge strings and that huge instrument swinging it all is just so much pulling and getting the balance of weight and pull. Also, it’s a lot of rosin as well. To be honest, it’s a lot of rosin.
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Wow–spending a couple of months just starting the string. What did those exercises look like? What did you practice?
I was preparing for an audition then, and I thought, it’s a little bit like Karate Kid, so I need to learn karate. No, I don’t need to learn how to wash the window.
I need to learn karate and have an audition in six weeks. I put my bow on the string. Completely relax the whole arm and hand, let the weight into the string, and then move the bow.
And if I’d done that as she’d said to, then the sound was awful because it was too much weight. And then we’d modify it just going very slowly, gradually developing a kind of vocabulary of weight.
It’s almost as if there are a hundred different positions where I have my arm according to the weight. But getting in touch with how that affects how you can start a note without an accent, with a good sound straight away, but no accent. Basically, putting the bow on the string and adjusting weight and speed.
There was a lot of failing. That was very important. Lots of notes starting with an awful scratch. And if I didn’t start with an awful scratch, I’m not supposed to have full weight. She’d say, “No, you’re cheating.” So, really going into it and noting everything that happened from the scratch to there being too little weight.
The full spectrum of the combination of weight and speed was stored in there. And I think that’s really important, particularly when you’ve got a difficult orchestral solo to play like Mahler 1, where you just need to be able to rely on starting that note and getting through the rest of the bow. And once you’ve got that much done, it plays itself. But unless you can start the note, it’s gonna be scary.
When you’re getting ready to start, let’s say that Mahler solo or something like that, how early do you get the bow on the string before you actually start the sound? Do you have something specific in mind?
I think I put it on the third beat of the second bar. Or I start lifting the arm on the third beat. I can’t remember exactly, but I find if you’re there too early, you start to get nervous.
And if it’s there too late, then it’s too hectic. So I think the last time I did it, I think I decided on the third beat of the second bar of timpani. It was a good time to get the bow up onto the string. I just have the bow divided up so that when I start exactly at the contact point, then how much of the bow for the first note and how much for the second, just so that I can feel free.
I have worked out that approach to feel free because I get very nervous about it, so I’ve got as much to fall back on as possible. But yeah, in every detail, like when to put the bow into the string.
And you’ve got that bow divided up, so you know this, like that first quarter, you’re using a certain amount of bow and right there and contact point and everything. You’ve got that all planned out.
I’ve got it all pretty much totally planned, so the approach becomes second nature. So I didn’t have to think about it when I was doing it, but it’s practiced in. And the biggest thing I found is to start the up bow and use two bows per bar.
I find with most students, the problem is the upbow is used too quickly. So I always try and use maybe a third of the up bow for the beginning note and then two-thirds of the bow for the second, which helps to phrase it.
But the problem is if you’ve used half the bar on a D and then used the other half of the E, and you’re getting into this kind of risky frog area.
I’m thinking about that in terms of other excerpts or audition preparation. Is that the approach you took to the rep you were preparing for auditions? That kind of detail?
Yeah, I find that kind of detail; I knew each contact point for my audition at the Berlin Phil. Each part of the bow I’d be using for each note. Not that it’s really analytical. It’s stupid, really. It’s so easy to do. And then once it’s in, it’s in. Usually, things just sound bad if you run out of bow!
But now it’s more second nature. When someone first mentioned bow distribution in my early twenties, I thought it sounded unmusical and analytical, but you must do it. It took me so long to believe that the reason why maybe a certain big shift going up was sounding terrible was just the bow was getting squashed near the frog or the other way around. I didn’t have enough bow to do it.
When you were getting ready for that Berlin audition, what was your preparation process like? What did that work look like for you?
I think the audition was in April 2008. And I started practicing for it in September 2007. I started practicing quite a lot then September, and then basically got it to a point about a month or two before where I was running it every day or two to people. I even played it to a bunch of four-year-olds once.
Anybody was an audience. Many friends come out and listen, or I’d go to them. I did big run-throughs. Run-throughs just for a couple of friends. I did dozens so that by the time of the audition, I felt like I’d been through as many possible kinds of nerve-creating scenarios as possible.
There’s no getting around that. Basically, being on stage is half the work. And a lot of students basically make the mistake. They’ll run it through for their tape recorder or something, but it’s very different than playing it to your peers.
Do you remember what was on the list when you auditioned?
It was only a few excerpts. The Recitatives from Beethoven 9. Actually, for the principal job, we didn’t even have the tutti excerpts. Actually, for this job, it was Mahler 1, the Otello Soli, Haydn 31, Pulcinella, and maybe something else I’d forgotten. But yeah, there, there weren’t many excerpts. You need one or two excerpts to see if someone can bounce the bow.
You don’t need 30. And we don’t have difficult excerpts either. They’re difficult, but things like Heldenleben and stuff like that it’s tricky. For auditions, I think you have to compromise so much of the piece’s spirit to play it in the kind of “audition style.”
Very cool that it’s just the solo. Is that standard throughout European jobs if you’re auditioning for the solo chair?
No, actually, no. My other job was principal, but I also played the normal excerpts. Every orchestra does it a little bit differently.
What do you do to keep your chops in shape these days? If you have 30 minutes or an hour to practice, do you have a specific daily technical routine that you do?
Yeah, if I have half an hour, I’ll do Petracchi exercises, and some scales and a couple of exercises, and yeah, I change it up sometimes.
There are a couple of Joel Quarrington’s exercises as well, but definitely, these chromatic thumb position exercises from Petracchi and the exercises for fifths and stuff, scales, and pitches. Now I’ve started playing studies. I never practiced them before, but I started doing them in the last year. I did lots of Bach, and I do Bach now if I have time as well. Usually first, second, or fifth Suite.
But yeah, if it’s just staying in shape, it’s basically Petracchi and maybe some Bach. And then maybe I’ll do a couple of things to check vibrato – stuff like that. I might do a bit of Gliere or Franck Sonata just a little bit just to check that. And that, I find, keeps me healthy.
Actually, playing in orchestra, teaching, and doing half an hour’s practice is often not bad.
That’s interesting that you recently started working on studies like Etudes and that sort of material. What inspired you to do that?
I think there’ve been some competitions recently where my students have had to play studies, the Nanny studies.
I can’t remember what the competition was. And they’re tricky. And so my students were playing them. They had to play from memory as well. I just thought I wanted to practice this too. Because I consistently had to teach them, I thought, “I’m going to learn these.”
And they’re really difficult. Not just difficult because of technique but difficult because they’re unpredictable. The notes seem almost random. It almost seems he just belted out the notes in any random order, so you can’t predict where you’re supposed to go next. You have to read it.
It’s like a random note generator kind of something.
Yeah. But there’s something about that I think I need for my brain because I realized the first time I was playing through Nanny, I would just play the notes that my brain thought should come next instead of actually reading what was there. But I lose patience and stuff like that quite quickly.
Sometimes, I’ll have these great bursts of motivation, “Right, I’m gonna learn these studies perfectly,” but then after a while, musically, they’re just not interesting enough to give all my effort to.
You mentioned bow distribution with students. What other common stumbling blocks do you see with students you work with?
Intonation, of course. Mostly small intervals. Going up high will be okay, but it’ll really be in the lower registers or lower down on the G-string, where the small intervals are often not heard or cared for. So that’s one aspect. Opening up people’s ears to these small intervals: tones and semitones.
Vibrato can be tricky. I find teaching vibrato is also very tricky. For some people, it’ll be very fast and tight, often holding the thumb too tightly on the back of the neck.
I sit when I play, and I notice among students who stand that it seems really difficult to just not grab onto that neck with some because then that kind of brings in all kinds of tension. The vibrato just doesn’t work, and the shifting doesn’t work, and then the whole bass is moving about.
The biggest one I find actually is belief in the bridge. That’s tough because, for many people, it’s a leap of faith. The bass sounds so nice sul tasto, but solo repertoire where you need to play closer to the bridge, and then they’ll move closer to the bridge, but with the same kind of bowing style as sul tasto, and it will sound bad, and then they’ll give up. But playing near the bridge requires a different feeling because there’s much more resistance.
It needs a different bowing style. And that can take a long time. I also took a long time to be convinced of the bridge because it’s the same thing. You go near the bridge, and then it sounds awful, and you think they’re talking rubbish, so you give up.
Outside of just working on the repertoire and getting closer to the bridge, do you have any exercises that you have students do to get comfortable up there? Closer to the bridge?
Not really exercise, but definitely long bows. I definitely encourage long, slow bow scales basically, but also just playing long notes, trying to get the bass to resonate more and seeing where this point is, where the bass almost seems like it’s, you can almost see light coming out of it, where the overtones are so strong that you can almost see it.
Just starting to enjoy what you can get out of the instrument. And I think a lot of the thing is finding what the instrument needs. I think a lot of the time, we give our own will and knowledge to the instrument. And sometimes just having the patience to find out what the instrument needs.
Just spending time with it, not necessarily trying to achieve anything except getting to know it better. Sometimes, I get lost in a trance, just playing open strings, just trying to get them bigger and bigger. Often, I’ll spend at least five minutes on one note.
Seeing what I can do, getting near the bridge, adjusting the speed, and stuff like that. One-note practice is great. Just staying on one note, trying to find a great color, always trying to find that sweet, dolce piano color near the bridge. We know how to do it sul tasto, but I think it has a more vocal color closer to the bridge.
Listening to older violinists, so much of that sweet sound. It’s just this incredible contact point. The perfect kind of cherry-colored sweetness you get by the right weight that needs the bridge. I think these days. Many people are hooked on all instruments more for the kind of fluffy, sul tasto sound.
But probably, if you do that on bass, you’re basically miming.
That’s such a great way to think of the resonance. I love the idea of getting lost in the resonance of the instrument.
It’s so much fun. I try and manipulate the overtones by changing the contact point and the speed overtones, trying to get more of the seventh, more of the fifth, and more of the third.
I just think all of that stuff is great because I never did much in the way of exercises. I bought exercise books, but I think unless you know what you’re looking for and what you are working for, you could be just opening tins of sardines or something. It’s not gonna help at all.
You might as well do something else. But if you’re really looking and really working, then I don’t think the exercise itself is so important. I’ve always invented them, so I’ll spend some time. Often, what I do is so that I can be sure that I’ve got a good contact point at the tip.
Just a few minutes to ensure I’m playing at the tip with a good contact and sound, and I’ll recommend doing stuff like that. Also, I find a posture for the bow, which is comfortable with the tip because I often say to a student, “Okay, go to the tip,” and then they can’t. They have to contort their body to get to the tip. It’s not bad to try and find a place where you can reach the tip easily.
What do you recommend to students in terms of dealing with stage fright and pressure situations? Do you have any advice for people that you give?
Of course, just performing as much as possible is the best way to deal with it.
If none of that’s helping, I try and breathe. I try and slow down my heart rate. I remember times when my heart was beating so fast, and I just breathed through it and tried and slow the heart rate down. But it depends on how much you’re affected. I always got very nervous, but I never got to the point where it’s affecting my performance too much.
The adrenaline rush of it. I’ve always loved the feeling of sweating and my heart racing. It’s the kind of feeling of not being totally in control. I always kind of liked it. I think at some point when I was quite young, maybe even 18 or 19, I just decided to love it.
Be grateful for it because I think the other side of it. The same coin is that incredible rush you get from playing a great concert. And I don’t think you can expect to have one without the other. So I think it’s best to make friends with it and find your way around it.
But this is why when I practice, I make sure I know everything I’m doing. Because stuff will go wrong. But the more you know what you’re doing, you know, just by looking. The bow has to be there and move at this kind of speed. There’s only so much nerves can destroy. But the more you prepare, the less it can damage you.
I leave room for spontaneity for sure. Not with Mahler 1. There’s no room for spontaneity there. But with many things, you could leave some room because I often find nerves very inspiring, and I also find they play better when I’m nervous. And I think if people can start to enjoy that side of it.
People are so worried about making a mistake, but what they should really be worried about is boring. The poor people have to listen to them. That’s more life-shattering than slipping a note or two. So the main thing is to get out and realize it’s your show. No one else is gonna play this.
You need to entertain. You need to play. You need to tell something and play some music. No one’s interested in your problems. No one is just interested in your success rate today. It’s getting out of yourself a little bit, letting go of the ego, and accepting that you’re there to tell a story.
Unfortunately, no one’s interested in how well it went in the room yesterday. I think the only way to improve is to perform more.
That’s a great mindset for performance and just embracing that rush.
That’s what we do it for, isn’t it?
