Steven Isserlis

Yep. At home in London.

Ah! Aha!

Boulanger, Eli Siegmeister, me.

I—I missed studying with her, um, by a few years. But, uh, Eli Siegmeister put me through four years of species counterpoint, all the things he—he learned from her in the '20s when he was there with Copland. So I—I had the—the training. And then later I studied with—with Longy. So I got the ear training that Mlle. Dieudonné gave people.

But in any event, when you're approaching a Fauré sonata, especially the second, or you're doing a Shostakovich sonata, the—the—tell—tell the—the people listening, your—your attempt—and I can only call it "attempt" because we all attempt—to get into the style of that piece. How do you start? And you've done everything, but how do you start?

You sit down at the piano with the score. I just go through saying, "first subject, second subject, third subject." Okay, this is a variation on the first subject, it's variation on the second subject, and so on, which sounds quite dry, but it isn't. Because it's like working out, if you read a novel, who the main characters are and what they're like. And then you sort of, you know, get to feel the characters, the different personalities of all the themes, how they interact. I mean, that, as I said, the word I keep coming back to is "story." And it's more obvious in a place—piece like the Shostakovich sonata that you mentioned, which is so much Russian storytelling. It's like a—the first movement is like a ballad, and it's cinematic, and it's, uh, it's very easy to conjure up visual images, story images for it.The Fauré sonata you mentioned, that's more a mood. I mean, that's just, again, in a way, it's more like Beethoven. You actually think in more purely musical terms. I find I don't need too many visual images for Fauré, um, that it is just such pure music. But emotional images, yes. And the extraordinary emotions that there's—both Fauré sonatas conjure up. For me, they are—I mean, I love Shostakovich, I love Debussy sonatas, I love—but for me, the Fauré sonatas are absolutely the pinnacle of 20th-century cello sonatas, by a long way.

Well, it's more the music brings it to me. I mean, you look at the music, and it makes you play in a different way. I mean, the way I would play Haydn, like I would play Shostakovich, it's not because I'm trying secretly to be authentic, but it's just because the music demands it. It'd be ridiculous to play Haydn like Shostakovich, or vice versa. Um, you know, it's like playing different characters in a play. In—in different plays, rather, you would talk in different ways, in different voices. You use different accents, maybe. Um, it's still you. You know, I—I don't feel I'm not being myself with any of these composers, but I guess different sides.I mean, Haydn has all the wit, all the emotion you could want, but it's wearing beautiful clothes the whole time. Shostakovich, you want grotesquery, because there's a lot of grotesquery in—in, at least Shostakovich in general, I think. Um, Fauré, you need—I don't know, I find one needs more contour to the phrases in Fauré than maybe any other, uh, composer. I find, you know, there's a lot if I'm playing with people. And some people are born to play Fauré, and some people, just, they're not natural Fauré players, I find. And the ones that are born do have this, just this naturally sort of undulating lines that are—I find so beautiful in Fauré. And it just comes, like Connie Shi, for instance, with whom I played the sonatas so many times. She was born to play Fauré.

Of course.

Well, [sighs] I can think of ways they shouldn't. Certainly not by listening to other performances.

Certainly not by playing in a way that isn't natural to them that they think is the style. I mean, that, we get so much with Bach, drives me mad—the way pe—people play Bach and think they're being authentic. There's nothing authentic about being mannered, or affected, or playing it so fast that you can't feel the beauty or the emotion of the music. Um, you have to identify with the role like an actor. You have to become the role. And I guess, just by studying it more and more. Um, the more you study a piece, the more it will reveal itself. And I don't mean by practicing it; I mean by looking at the score and thinking about it, and thinking what it's really saying, thinking where all the phrases lead, where they lead away from. I mean, you know, some people are very good at going to the center of a phrase, but they forget to come away from it. Or some people don't know where the center of each phrase is, which you have to—you have—not just by instinct, I think, you actually need to know where the center of a phrase is, or part of a phrase. Because each phrase, or part of a phrase, has a—as a central point that the music will go towards and then come away from. And it's important to know that. Um, even, cont—

Oh, yeah, because I'm studying all the time. Um.

Mhm, absolutely. I mean, a great work like the Schumann Cello Concerto or the Fauré sonatas or Beethoven's sonatas, of course, Bach suites, of course—I'm just talking about the cello repertoire, but any great music will tell you an infinite number of things. And you can never stop learning it, and it'll tell you different things every time you play it.

[Laughs] I remember— well, that's quite true. I met—I suppose I must have met Tortelier a few times, but I remember, I think, the last time I met him, he heard me play the Bloch pieces from From Jewish Life at the Mstislav Rostropovich's cello festival in Washington. I remember the—the next day he said—he was very nice about it and then he said, "But a great cellist needs," and he started listing things, and then he said, "you have that, you have that." And I'm sure he was going to tell me things I didn't have, but luckily, sort of—well, maybe not luckily—he got sort of sidetracked and was so carried away with his own eloquence, he forgot to tell me what it was I didn't have. [Laughs]

[Laughs] He did, didn't he?

Yeah. Definitely.

Very rarely.

It's all communicating. You know, it comes from the same thing, that's a love of music, which I certainly do have. I just adore music, maybe too much, I don't know. It's almost an obsession.

Well.

Not for my friends. [Laughs] Um, but—

That's nice. Thank you. Um, but yeah, it's all communicating. I have this love of music and I just want to share it, and it might be a specific piece of music that I'm playing, or a specific composer. In fact, the children's books you mention there, um, they're each about six composers. They have Beethoven and Handel in the title, but each book features the life stories of six composers. And then I also wrote this book—co-wrote it with a very nice co-author called Robert Schumann. We wrote Advice for Young Musicians. That's—

—you do, and that was um, that was my commentary on his Advice for Young Musicians. I was just trying to bring it up to date.

Absolutely, with Barbirolli, yeah.

I think the last—I've had problems with the last movement until I taught it. And then when I actually looked at the score, I think, this makes perfect sense. But you always hear too much of the violin. It's actually really another chamber music piece, and if you—if—if the orchestra leads, it becomes—makes perfect sense. And the only problem with that beautiful Menuhin recording, which apparently he felt was his best recording, um, is that you don't hear enough of the orchestra. There's too much violin. And I had a friend remix it, who's into such things. He rem—remixed it so you can hear more of the orchestra, and it's better. But it is a gorgeous recording, that I agree. Um, but there's, you know, I find it very hard to have any shadow of criticism about one note Schumann wrote. I think the man was a complete genius, and everything he wrote was perfect, and we have to work to understand some of the later music, but actually once you've understood it, it's, if anything, even greater than the earlier music.

It's not necessary. It's like Shostakovich tried to re-orchestrate the cello concerto and apparently he bitterly regretted it at the end because he realized—

Yeah. There was absolutely no reason for it whatsoever. It's perfect.

Yeah, I play number one much more often, but I have played number two, yeah.

Yeah. Which— Well, it—with the—with all the—the orchestra players were all sitting there saying, "Okay, when do we come in?" [Shapiro laughs] "This is going on a bit long." Actually, that's one— one—that's one of the nicest orchestras in the world I played with is the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin. And I tell you, I stopped at the dress rehearsal, so I said, "Okay, let's go to the last movement," and they all said, "No, we want to hear it." So they got to hear it twice. Masochists. But it's very unusual. Most orchestras—nice though—as nice as they may be, would not say that.

Oh, conductors. [Laughs]

Mhm.

Some of it. I wouldn't say a lot. Some of it.

There are, I don't know what it's because of, but the cello is not such a loud instrument. I mean, I'm not the loudest cellist in the world, and I don't want to be. That's not my—not my way. Um, but the cello is not, you know, if I play with a violin, if you hear a cello and violin play together, it's very, very rare that you hear less of the violinist than of the cellist. Violin is higher, more piercing. Um, and the cello by its nature shouldn't be like that. It should be a mellow, lyrical instrument. Um, which of course, is as exciting as you like. I mean, Shostakovich in the first concerto doesn't use it much that way. He finds a brilliant new, a brilliant new way to, to use it. But generally, I'd say, a work like the Dvořák is heroic, but it's also very lyrical and very intimate. And Dvořák is, for me, perhaps the more difficult of the great concertos, balance-wise. You do have to be very careful. Um, and it was said at the first performance in London in 1896, they said unfortunately you couldn't hear the cello enough. That is always a problem in the Dvořák because it is a big orchestra. But again, I think it's chamber music, and I, you know, I really think that, and if an orchestra has a light style, then it's—if they play sort of heavily and, as you know, dig into their instruments, or, you know, they want this heavy style, which for me is not Dvořák, that can be a problem. But if it—they know how to sort of bring out the folk rhythms and the dancing in the music, then it's okay. Um, so, I mean, of course, it's one of my all-time favorite works. It's the first class—piece of classical music I fell in love with. Um, and I adore it, still.

Uh, I think there's many amazing sections.

Oh, I think the second one. That's where he quotes from the song that his sister-in-law loved. Weird thing about that is that the first is sort of, you know, at a very exciting, full-throated moment, and he marks the pia—the violin piano. I think cello's fortissimo. [Laughs] Just trilling. And then the second time, where it's really gentle and lyrical and inward-looking, he marks it forte. [Laughs] For me, is a very strange thing.

Oh, it's the whole piece is just genius.

Um, you know, you can't base your interpretation on, on their lives. I think they—their music tells us about their lives, or doesn't. You know, it depends how confessional their music is. Schumann himself said that everything in his life came out in his music. And that you can feel. Um, it's very, can be very useful to know when a composer is quoting something. Like, for you mention the Shostakovich second concerto, and I was having trouble with understanding the, sort of, the the cadence into G major that keeps coming in the last movement, and I thought, what is he doing here? He's sure—he's quoting something. And I remember that around the same time he wrote that concerto, he orchestrated Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death.

And I gave it a lesson, and there was that phrase. So, then I had words to it, and then it fell into place. So things like that can be useful.

But on the other hand, it can also have a negative effect. I mean, Shostakovich— Yes, I think so. Yeah. —with Testimony coming out, people started ignoring the beauty, the tenderness there can be in his music. I mean, it's not just all gloom and doom, and Soviet police, you know, on the other side of the door. That's part of it, but it's not all of it, by any means. He's a great romantic composer, as well. And people started brutalyzing his music, I think because they've—they'd read Testimony, which isn't by him, anyway. Um, so I think—

I don't think so. Though, I did meet him once. Oh. Um, yes, in the—in a box at Carnegie Hall, that was when Ashkenazy did his, um, sort of forgotten Soviet music series, and I played Kabalevsky Concerto No. 2. And then, I think it was the next night, or the night before, I was in the box and Solomon—I was introduced to this man as Solomon Volkov, which was fascinating. I really enjoyed meeting him. The only thing is, what I really remember—I don't remember what he said, unfortunately, I just remember I was desperate to get to the bathroom and then the interval was over, 'cause I spent it all talking to him. That's not the most sort of spiritual memory.

I think it's— I think it's a very complicated question. I mean, I think yes, partly because musicians want to play it. Um, I think composers who have become known as major composers are those who have a recognizable voice. Like for me, Vivaldi, I'm not sure I call—I wouldn't call him a great composer, although I love The Seasons. But, I think also he wrote a lot of very automatic stuff, but the moment you turn on the radio, ah, that's Vivaldi. And you can't do that with Saint-Saëns, for instance, because Saint-Saëns keeps changing style, and you can't say, "Oh, that's Saint-Saëns," because it probably isn't. Um, and so I think that's what defines maybe a major composer, not a great composer, because I think Saint-Saëns, in his way, was maybe great. Um, but Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, much more easy to identify, immediately. But Fauré, again, his late music, he's writing for a—in a way, for himself. So it's never going to be sort of, you know, sort of fill the concert halls, it's never going to be a Mahler-esque, I mean, you know, his Mahler symphony or whatever. It's never going to have that effect on people. It's a sort of, his late music is ecstatic, and I think it's totally wonderful, but I don't expect it ever to be as popular as Mahler or whatever. Um, or Shostakovich, because there's that—

Oh, maybe. Most composers wrote their Requiems for themselves, like your friend there, [Shapiro laughs] and Schumann, and, um, yes.

He wasn't even—

He wasn't even very religious, if at all.

Wasn't he another Nadia Boulanger student?

I don't know, I think it helps composers to be popular, whether it helps to be great music—I mean, like one of my very favorite British composers is Frank Bridge. But as his style became more complex and, for me, more interesting, as he got—he—he really didn't, wasn't bothered about writing beautiful melodies, like Elgar writes these gorgeous melodies. And therefore, he's popular, and he, you know, he reaches people's hearts immediately. Bridge was going sort of elsewhere, and um, doesn't make it any less great, just makes it slightly more difficult to— Like Taneyev, for me, is a most wonderful composer, but I don't particularly, you know, I don't go around humming Taneyev melodies like I would Tchaikovsky.

No, I mean, not, but even melody. I can't think of a Taneyev melody, particularly, whereas, you know, you can think of so many Tchaikovsky melodies. And that's why Tchaikovsky will always be more popular. But, you know, Taneyev is great in his way, too. He's just, as Fauré said of his music—and he was probably talking mostly about his late music—he said, "I realize my music is not for everybody." I mean, I wish it were for everybody, and I play it as often as I can and hope it is for everybody, but I realize it's—it's more challenging. Late Fauré is more challenging than early Fauré, for instance.

Yeah.

Of music. I think it's true of music. There's always a story.

Well, lacking. It might just not be a memorable tune. It doesn't mean say the melodic line is lacking.

You know, I wouldn't even say the Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy, is the greatest melody in the world.

Yeah.

That's what's important.

It's what the composer does with the material.

Well, I try to try to be respectful of what's done. That's my job.

So, I can't say honestly I think of it as a job, [laughs] um, more of a vocation, but yeah, my task is to become that composer's music. I mean, as I say, if I were to play Hamlet, I would want to become Hamlet, as an actor, and it's exactly the same with music.

I could listen to you all night.

Ah, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Pleasure.