His performance Thursday was a marvelous mix of melancholy and agitation, technical expertise and effusive emotion.

Isserlis is a thrilling player to watch and hear. Still sporting the gray-tinged poodle shag of an aging ’70s rock guitarist, Isserlis would be called a “monster” in that genre’s parlance, a player of tremendous power and skill who leavened the concerto’s sad lyricism with the adrenaline injections of some very difficult fast passages.

This follows a review from Limelight magazine in Australia a few weeks ago, which reviewed a performance Steven gave of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Kai with members of the Melbourne Symphony under the baton of Thomas Ades:

Superstar cellist Steven Isserlis delivered jaw-droppingly good performances in Kai and in Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages for solo cello. He entertained not merely for his extraordinary mastery of his instrument, but also his exuberant performance mannerisms: the extravagantly wide bow movements, the hyperactive leg twitches and the monumental mass of curly hair (which I would say more than rivals Gustavo Dudamel’s).

Interesting descriptions…

10 August, Hanoi, Vietnam
Hanoi Opera House
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

11 August, Hanoi, Vietnam
Hanoi Opera House
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

13 August, Singapore
Esplanade Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

14 August, Singapore
Esplanade Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

16 August, Shenzhen, China
Zhongshan Cultural & Arts Center
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

17 August, Shenzhen, China
Zhongshan Cultural & Arts Center
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

19 August, Taipei, Taiwan
Taipei Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

20 August, Taipei, Taiwan
Taipei Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

23 August, Hong Kong
Hong Kong Cultural Centre
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

24 August, Hong Kong
Hong Kong Cultural Centre
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

26 August, Osaka, Japan
Osaka NHK Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

29 August, Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Dvorak cello concerto

30 August, Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall
With Asian Youth Orchestra and James Judd, conductor
Programme to include:
Haydn cello concerto

3-4 July, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Recording with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Paavo Jarvi, conductor
SHOSTAKOVICH Cello concerto No.1

7 July, Manchester, UK
Manchester International Festival
With BBC Philharmonic, Tecwyn Evans, conductor
Programme
TAVENER ‘Love Duet’ from ‘The Play of Krishna’
TAVENER The Death of Ivan Ilyich
TAVENER If Ye Love Me
TAVENER Mahamatar
TAVENER In Alium

24 July, Helmsley, UK
Ryedale Festival
With Sam Haywood, piano
Programme

ONSLOW Sonata in C minor
REYNALDO HAHN Deux airs Irlandais
SCHUBERT Arpeggione Sonata
BRIDGE Sonata
BACH Gamba Sonata No.3

1 June, New York, NY, USA
Carnegie Hall
With Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Programme to include
HAYDN Cello Concerto in D Major, Hob. Vllb: 2

6 June, Ulverston, UK
Ulverston International Music Festival
With Ian Brown, piano
Programme
BACH Gamba Sonata No.2
RAVEL Deux mélodies hébraïques
BRIDGE Sonata
BLOCH From Jewish Life
SAINT-SAËNS Sonata No.1

11 June, Zurich, Switzerland
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
With Zürcher Kammerorchester
Programme
HAYDN Symphony in D minor Hob. 1:26 ‘Lamentatione’
RAVEL Deux mélodies hébraïques, for cello and string orchestra
CPE BACH Cello concerto A minor Wq170
BLOCH From Jewish Life, for cello and string orchestra
HAYDN Symphony in C major Hob. 1:48, 1. Fassung “Maria Theresa”

9 May, Apple Valley, MN, USA
Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church
With St Paul Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Zehetmair, conductor
Programme to include Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129

10 May, Eden Prarie, MN, USA
Wooddale Church
With St Paul Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Zehetmair, conductor
Programme to include Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129

11 May, Summit Avenue, MN, USA
St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
With St Paul Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Zehetmair, conductor
Programme to include Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129

22 May, Lucerne, Switzerland
Zaubersee – Russian Music Lucerne 2013 – Opening night
Schweizerhof Hotel Luzerne
Programme
Debussy – Piano trio in G major
with Vilde Frang, violin and Michail Lifits, piano
Tchaikovsky – Piano trio in A minor, op. 50
with Maxim Vengerov, violin and Nicholas Angelich, piano

24 May, Lucerne, Switzerland
Zaubersee – Russian Music Lucerne 2013 – Lunchtime concert II
St. Charles Hall
Programme
Debussy – Cello sonata, L 135
Shostakovitch – Cello Sonata in D minor, op. 40
Julius Isserlis – Ballade
Anton Rubinstein – Cello Sonata No. 1 in D major, op. 18

25 May, Lucerne, Switzerland
Zaubersee – Russian Music Lucerne 2013
St. Charles Hall

Masterclass

25 May, Lucerne, Switzerland
Zaubersee – Russian Music Lucerne 2013 – Long Night Part I
KKL Luzern
With Daniil Trifonov, piano, Alexander Melnikov, piano, Nicholas Angelich, piano
Programme to include:
Daniil Trifonov – Rachmaniana
Rachmaninov – Lied op post
Rachmaninov – Cello Sonata, op. 19

1 June, New York, NY, USA
Carnegie Hall
with Orchestra of St Luke’s and Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Programme to include Haydn – Cello Concerto in D Major, Hob. Vllb: 2

3-14 April, Prussia Cove, UK
IMS Prussia Cove Masterclasses

20 April, Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne Recital Centre
With Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Adès, conductor
Programme
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Kai
Kurtág – Hommage a John Cage
Kurtág – Pilinsky Janos: Gerard de Nerval
Kurtág - Shadows
Kurtág - In Memoriam Gyorgy Kroo

26 & 27 April, Hong Kong
Hong Kong Cultural Centre
With Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Programme to include Dvorak cello concerto no 1 in A (ed Gunther Raphael)

Steven’s latest release with the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, ‘In the Shadow of War’, is available now in selected stores and Amazon – downloads on iTunes are also available.

Reviews

Isserlis’s spellbinding advocacy of Bridge’s masterpiece has acquired a plangent intensity. … A most distinguished release.

The recording is also a ‘Gramophone Choice’ and is available on the Gramophone Player.

Hauntingly titled ‘In the Shadow of War’ and accompanied by an insightful essay by Steven Isserlis, this outstanding collection finds the great cellist at the peak of his powers, playing with a poetic urgency that galvanises the attention… Isserlis gives a bravura performance of elemental power, spectacularly recorded and sensitively accompanied, whose enraptured poetic musings resonate long in the memory after the music has ended.

  Juian Haylock, Sinfini Music

If you’re looking for a modern recording of Schelomo  I can’t think of a better one than this.

Nigel Simeone, International Record Review

Inhabited with searing, sometimes terrifying beauty by Steven Isserlis… The committed support of Hugh Wolff and the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin is a vital component of the performance’s impact, and the recording is outstanding as well… Altogether an outstanding hybrid SACD.

BBC Radio 3 CD Review 06/04/2013

I was sixteen when I first attended the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall, on the south-west tip of England. I had heard many stories about the seminar’s founder, the great Hungarian violinist and teacher (and later conductor) Sandor Vegh – about his amazing musicianship, his fearsome temper and his extraordinary looks. But I was not prepared for the sight that met my bleary eyes when, early in the morning and far-from-fresh from the sleeper train, I was dropped off at my cottage on the Prussia Cove estate: the first person I saw was Sandor Vegh himself, ambling towards the bathroom in his pyjamas. I fled softly, hoping he hadn’t spotted me.

This inauspicious non-meeting behind me, though, I was (like everybody else – except for the students who felt the force of his not infrequent wrath) captivated by the classes I attended over the following ten days. Vegh used to say that he had inherited a great tradition, having studied with Hubay, who had played with Brahms. That was certainly true – but the joy of his musicianship was not merely a matter of tradition.  His way of playing, of teaching, was radiantly alive. He insisted that every note have its correct place, that music never stand still; perhaps his over-riding preoccupation as a teacher was contour, every phrase having its high and low points,  each forte (as he put it) ‘having his piano’. It all felt as natural as speech.

At the end of the course, I played Prokofiev’s sonata for cello and piano in a student concert, and afterwards, to my delight, found myself completely enfolded within a hug from Vegh. ‘I am sorry that Pablo {Casals} could not hear you,’ he said. ‘He would have loved to tease you.’ (I THINK he meant ‘teach’ – but he said ‘tease’. Maybe that was what he meant!) It was a thrilling moment for me – and the beginning of a rather rocky, but to me immensely important, relationship that was to last until Vegh’s death. The next year I went back to IMS, and played a Beethoven string trio with my sisters in Vegh’s class. Two years later, I attended for the first time the newly-formed Open Chamber Music at IMS, in which older musicians (including Vegh) worked on chamber music with younger musicians. I was put into a few different groups with the great man – and disaster struck. I was now nineteen, very pleased with myself, rather irresponsible – and inexperienced in chamber music. The main group in which I was playing with Vegh was the Mendelssohn Octet for strings, on which we were to work for two weeks. I was initially supposed to play first cello, but after hearing me floundering through one rehearsal, Vegh (quite rightly) demoted me to second. From then, having been a favourite of his, I became a distinct un-favourite. The second cello part has its own share of difficulties: for instance, the last movement begins with a fast passage played on the C string, the lowest string of the cello; it is very hard to make the notes sound clear. Every time we approached that part, my heart sank. Vegh would yell at me, imitating the noise I was making and making me do it over and over again, with everyone else sitting in miserable silence.  It was hell. And yet – at the concert, I was told that that passage was clearer than my friends had ever heard it. And, far more importantly, Vegh played like an angel. To this day, no matter how beautifully that first violin part is played, I hear Vegh’s performance in my mind’s ear, the layers of meaning he brought to it, the shapes and colours – inevitable, but completely unexpected – that he discovered in every phrase. I realized, as I emerged from the seminar, that I had learned a huge amount, that I would never see music in the same light again.

Over the next years, I played with him often. It was never easy – I was no longer his blue-eyed (well, brown-eyed) boy, as I had been when I was 16; but the relationship was (for me, anyway) incredibly fruitful. There were many low points – such as the time he threw me out of a rehearsal for bringing a cup of tea in with me; the hideous moment when, after I had repeatedly (in an effort to assert my independence) accused him of coming in on the wrong beat in a Schumann trio, it transpired that it was I who was wrong – I’ll never forget the look he gave me; and, most memorably, the time he poured a glass of beer over my head. (I think he’d overheard me imitating him.) But there were also many high points, as he demonstrated ways of playing that were completely new and revelatory. The last work we played together was Schumann’s 3^rd trio, op 110, with Andras Schiff playing the piano. Vegh more than slightly un-nerved me before we embarked upon the first rehearsal by casually mentioning that the last time he’d played the piece had been with Casals; but still, rehearsals, while tough (mostly) were fascinating (always). The concert at the end of the week had its share of mishaps, and Vegh worried that his playing might be going downhill (it was one of his last concerts as a violinist); but Andras, who listened to the tape afterwards, told me that despite the imperfections, Vegh sounded wonderful, his playing conveying a gritty strength that was unique. I remember many other revelatory performances he gave in Cornwall – none more so than one of the Mendelssohn D minor trio, also with Andras at the piano, and with Tibor de Machula (former first cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwangler) playing the cello. It was extraordinary – half the tempo of most of the performances I’d heard of that piece, but again sounding totally inevitable, and so much more meaningful than any other reading.

His physical approach to the violin was, like his musicianship, founded on completely natural principles. His teaching was organic, every piece of invaluable technical advice entirely related to a musical goal. His legacy as a teacher can be seen in the huge number of his disciples around today, themselves performing or teaching throughout the world of music. Some of the recordings of his famous Vegh quartet, too, have earned themselves immortality – rather literally in one case, since their recording of Beethoven’s quartet op 130 was placed in NASA’s outer-space-bound Voyager, as one of the items intended to show other civilizations what we’ve achieved down here.   Many of his performances with Casals are also striking testaments of a great partnership. But in general, I feel that perhaps one had to be there in person to feel the full force of Vegh’s playing; on disc, sometimes the intonation (to which he had a very individual attitude) and the lack of beauty for its own sake can be a distraction to ears used to the shiny perfection of today’s touched-up performances. I feel no such qualms, however, about his recordings as a conductor. Here – in Schubert’s 5^th and 8^th symphonies, for instance – one can immediately feel his wondrous understanding of phrasing and of musical structure, gripping the listener from the opening sounds until the last note dies away. The orchestra is the one of which he was principal conductor for almost twenty years, the Salzburg Camerata. How hard he must have worked them! No note is taken for granted, every phrase having its own unique shape and meaning. Knowing his methods, I can imagine that it wasn’t exactly pure enjoyment for the players – and yet, few orchestras can ever have sounded that fresh and spontaneous. It is no surprise that Carlos Kleiber used to listen to as many of Vegh’s rehearsals as he could; when they finally met, at a dinner hosted by Vegh’s daughter Alja, the two men got on splendidly.

Alas, Vegh is long gone. I didn’t see him for a few years before he died, unfortunately, although I corresponded with him through his wife Alice; and then, through Alja, he invited me to play in a festival to celebrate his 85^th birthday – sadly, though, he died a few months before the event took place. (Perhaps I meant a little more to him than I would have imagined, because after Alice died, Alja told me that she’d found a framed picture of Vegh and myself in her mother’s apartment. I was deeply touched to hear that.) These days his influence lives on as strongly as ever at IMS Prussia Cove. He became less involved with the organization during his last, frailer years; and eventually, with Vegh’s blessing, Hilary Behrens, the former student of Vegh’s who had made his master’s dream of a seminar in Cornwall a reality, asked me to take over as Artistic Director. I was thrilled that Vegh wanted me to assume his mantle. From the beginning, I felt the responsibility of taking over a seminar that had meant so much to so many musicians. Our principal aim was – and still is – to continue to pass on Vegh’s musical values, the values he had himself imbibed from his teacher Hubay, and also from such figures as Bartok, Dohnanyi, Chaliapin and Casals, all of whom played important roles in his life. Of course, such a seminar has to keep alive, and to be renewed. Some of the professors who have to come to teach there recently – such as the composer Thomas Ades – never knew Vegh; but the majority of our regular teachers are musicians who came under Vegh’s direct influence. These include Andras Schiff, who performed more than anyone else with Vegh in his later years, and who brings his mentor’s ideas wonderfully to life in his own music-making; the great composer Gyorgy Kurtag, who cites the performance of Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue which Vegh conducted at one of the seminars as being among the absolute highpoints of his musical life; Ferenc Rados, the inspiring and brilliant teacher of Schiff, Zoltan Kocsis and many others; Vegh’s pupils Gerhard Schulz, Erich Hobarth and Thomas Riebl; and for the cello class, Ralph Kirshbaum, David Waterman and myself, all of whom, while not exactly his students, played many times with Vegh – not so different from studying with him.

We are very happy to be bringing some of the seminar’s work to Salzburg in honour of Vegh’s centenary. Normally, our classes and chamber music rehearsals are confined to the estate in Cornwall, remote as it is from any city or regular concert-venue. (It is a six-hour train-ride from London – not for the faint-hearted.) We like it that way; it is important to get away from the pressures of everyday professional life, so that we can spend the time in inspiring surroundings, living music together. But this once, in celebration both of the centenary, and of the 40^th anniversary of IMS Prussia Cove, we are looking forward to sharing with you some aspects of our work: classes given by Andras and myself on major chamber music masterpieces by Schubert; and a rehearsal of Mozart coached from within by Gerhard Schulz, our beloved violin professor for many years (who also does the best imitation of Vegh that I know  – it’s uncanny!) Finally, Gerhard and some of the other musicians offer a lunchtime concert which we hope will convey some of the deep love of music that Vegh nurtured at the seminars. We are very conscious that we are, in a way, presenting, at one of the greatest music festivals in the world, ‘work in progress’ from an entirely different sort of festival, one that is educational in intent, not really performance-based. But we feel that the seminar has had an important influence on the world of music during the last 40 years. Often that influence has been hidden, which is as it should be; but through these classes, rehearsal and concert we are offering a brief public glimpse of a private musical oasis where, we like to think, Vegh’s artistic values are flourishing.

Why is it that so much Czech music is loveable in such a unique way?  What quality is it that causes the listener immediately to trust composers such as Dvorak and Martinu, to feel such a deep empathy with them? Perhaps it is a silly question; in a way, one always feels empathy with a great composer. But when one compares Dvorak with Brahms, for instance, Janacek with Debussy, Martinu with Stravinsky, the lack of worldly sophistication of the Czechs, the guileless honesty, the connection to the inner Czech child, is deeply striking. The other nationalist musical schools that came into being in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – French, Russian or Hungarian, for instance – are equally distinctive and distinguished, of course; but the words ‘innocent’ and ‘childlike’ do not so instantly spring to mind. Needless to say, this is not a value judgement in any way; but it does make Czech music uniquely, irresistibly attractive.

All of the composers represented in the two programmes of Czech chamber music that we are presenting at this summer’s Salzburg Festival were great craftsmen, thoroughly skilled classical composers who mastered – and in some cases transformed – traditional forms. But none of them ever lost touch with their roots, with the folk music and dances that permeated the lives of Bohemia and Moravia in the 19^th century. It is perhaps significant that all six composers came from the countryside; and that all of them were surrounded by music from birth – it was part of Czech culture. Any occasion in Czech life was an excuse to make music. (Dvorak’s very first composition was a polka written for the village band of which he was a proud young member.)

Smetana’s father was a brewer and a keen amateur violinist; Dvorak’s father was a butcher, but also a dedicated zither-player – in later life a professional one. Janacek’s father was a church organist, Suk’s a choral director, and Martinu’s a bell-ringer! For all the composers, music played a central role in their education; and all of them retained the musical culture of their childhoods throughout their creative lives, albeit in different ways. Smetana, a political revolutionary who is now considered the ‘father of Czech music’, was actually brought up speaking German, and in later life had to study the Czech language before he could produce the first genuinely Czech operas. Dvorak was equally proud of his nationality, and composed many purely Czech works; but perhaps his most influential and original achievement was to retain a vital element of folk music within his symphonies, concertos and quartets. His entire output is permeated with the spirit of dance, song or folk-tale.  Martinu is another case in point. Famously brought up in a church tower, his works are full of the peals of bells, and also of a huge variety of dance-forms, from baroque to jazz; but somehow his Czech identity is always at the core of his music. Janacek is different, of course; although no stranger to dance or to folksongs (like Dvorak, he was a keen collector of folk music), his outstanding legacy lies in his creation of a new musical language based on speech-rhythms. But he is all the more a composer ‘of the people’ for that; walking the streets of every town he visited, noting down the patterns of the speech he heard – even, macabrely, notating his daughter’s dying utterances – he remained resolutely entrenched in the spirit of his native Moravia. As for Suk, he built on and developed the legacy of his teacher and father-in-law Dvorak; probably his most famous work, the ‘Asrael’ symphony, was dedicated to the memory of Dvorak and his daughter Otilie, Suk’s wife, who died just a year after her father.

All these composers shared a fierce pride in their Czech cultural heritage, and had much else in common; but of course they were very different characters, with very different destinies. Smetana is the most tragic figure of the five. Poor man – what a life. After all sorts of personal and career difficulties, he achieved some success – but thereafter was struck down all too soon with deafness, followed by madness. His piano trio was inspired by an earlier tragedy: the death of his adored daughter Bedřiška. His anguished grieving can be heard throughout, as we hear the ghost of the little child – a talented pianist – playing Chopin, whose music she loved. The work ends in a cry of pain. And yet, for all the suffering, there is still charm, there is warmth, and there is that freshness and honesty that runs like a Czech river through all the music in these programmes.

Dvorak, indisputably the most widely beloved of these five composers, features largely in these programmes, since chamber music was very much at the centre of his output. Although his works can be deeply tragic – as witness the extraordinary last movement of the Four Romantic Pieces – I find that when I think of his music, the over-riding impression is of deep joy. (Somehow I have the feeling that his next-door neighbour in heaven these days must be Haydn.) . Composers from Brahms onwards have always loved the simplicity of Dvorak’s heart; performers adore playing his works; children respond to his music instantly. In fact, I think that anyone who does not love Dvorak should seek therapy immediately!

Suk is the least well-known of the five. We are playing a very early work of his, the piano quartet op 1, composed before he had found his powerful later voice. His progress was striking; even his piano quintet, written only two years after this quartet, inhabits a very different, more sophisticated world, somewhat freer of the influence of his teacher and future father-in-law Dvorak. And yet, I find the piano quartet irresistible; the soul of the 17-year-old Suk sings out, the freshness, optimism and uncomplicated romanticism of the music reaching out to us, making of the quartet not just a promising early production but a deeply satisfying work in its own right.

Janacek, of course, was a far more knotty character altogether: difficult, sullen, full of anger, this extraordinary man followed an entirely individual path and in doing so carved out a unique niche for himself in the history of music. And yet, despite the grand scale of so many of his masterpieces, the clear-eyed child is never absent. We hear it here in the fairy-tale magic of Pohadka and in the passionate fury of the violin sonata.  And finally Martinu: the only one of the five who ended his days exiled from his beloved homeland, his life-story was the most dramatic of all. Having written his first cello sonata as the Nazis approached Paris – had they captured him, he would have been done for – he wrote his second sonata to celebrate his (narrow) escape to America. It is full of the vibrant energy of jazz – symbolic of the power and vigour of his new home. Like Dvorak before him in his “American’ works, Martinu loved and absorbed the music of his adopted land, and wrote music that was both clearly American and deeply Czech.  It might seem like an anomaly; but actually, the immediacy of the folk music of both countries does seem to be related. In fact, it was Dvorak who, during his tenure as professor of composition at the conservatory of music in New York, stressed that it was from their native music that American composers would create a truly national style. And how right he was – even if he might have been slightly surprised to find some of the forms the music was to take. It’s nice to think that there’s some justification for naming Dvorak as the father of rock and roll! The influence of Czech music is everywhere…

Steven Isserlis