Educated at Solihull School, Barralet started playing the cello at the age of five, studying with Hannah Roberts at the Royal Northern College of Music and Thomas Demenga in Basel Hochschule für Musik where he was awarded the Soloists Diploma.
He complemented his studies by taking master classes with Steven Isserlis, Ralph Kirshbaum, Boris Pergamenschikow, Miklós Perényi at the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove.
Barralet was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Julius Isserlis Scholarship in 2003 to fully support two years study abroad and won the Landor Records[1] Competition in 2007.
As an advocate of contemporary music, he has made premiere recordings of the 1971 first movement of Benjamin Britten's Third Cello Suite, and of Edwin Roxburgh's Partita.
He performed the Partita alongside Kenneth Hesketh's Die Hängende Figur ist Judas at the Purcell Room in a Park Lane Group concert in 2008, and the following year, he performed Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and György Ligeti's Sonata for Solo Cello at his Wigmore Hall debut recital.