Steven Isserlis

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the cellist Stephen Isserlis. His flawless technique and dedication to authenticity have brought him huge critical acclaim as the ultimate virtuoso. Yet the dream of fulfilling his artistic destiny threatened to end as a nightmare with a decade in the professional wilderness, living the life of a virtually starving artist. Now he ranks among the world's finest cellists, and given his background, perhaps that's little surprise. Distantly related to Mendelssohn, he comes from a long line of musicians.

Presenter0:57

His own musical instruction started before he could write. With two older sisters playing the viola and the violin, the decision was made for him that he should learn the cello. That way it was easier for the family to play chamber music together. Music, he says, was so central to their existence that even their pet dog used to sing along. Is that true?

Steven Isserlis1:17

That is very true.

Presenter1:18

Explain

Steven Isserlis1:20

We had this dandy Din Monterrier whom I adored, I sort of still adore, and he would howl along when we practised, but particularly there's a Mozart piano sonata in C major. He would howl to that unfailingly, and if we change key from C major to B major or or C sharp major, he would stop. He was obsolete.

Steven Isserlis1:41

His chords were touched by C major, he was he was quite a stern critic.

Presenter1:45

Most people, especially when they are talking to me on this programme, talk about music be you showing me their picture of him on your T-shirt. You very you do love him.

Steven Isserlis1:52

You very

Steven Isserlis1:54

I love it.

Presenter1:54

He's still there next to your heart, as it were.

Steven Isserlis1:56

Yeah, as it works.

Presenter1:58

People talk about music being the soundtrack to their lives, but actually, when it comes to you.

Presenter2:03

We seem to be talking about something altogether different. I mean the the breaths you've taken seem to be tied up with music.

Steven Isserlis2:08

Yeah, I certainly don't remember any sort of life without music, because my father played the violin, and my mother was a piano teacher, so I think I would go to sleep as a baby, or certainly as a little child, to the sound of them practising.

Steven Isserlis2:22

You know, we were surrounded by music.

Presenter2:23

I mean, in the introduction there I said that the cello was chosen for you, so as you could complete the family sound, but but given that it was almost foisted upon you, you you were happy, once you had time to think about it, that this was the instrument that had been chosen for you.

Steven Isserlis2:37

Well, actually I think when I first started I must have been four or five and I used to think it was terribly funny to play on the wrong side of the bridge, which makes this horrible squeaky sound, and I wouldn't stop doing that. So they made me stop lessons. And I still remember lying on the floor and crying my eyes out, feeling so humiliated. It must have been quite a moment for me still to remember it. And um then so they sent me back when I was six and grown up. And of course by then I was dying to play the cello, to redeem myself.

Presenter3:07

You own more than one, shall you? And is it three? Well, no, I have access to.

Steven Isserlis3:11

Two three or four, yes.

Presenter3:13

And they all have different characters.

Steven Isserlis3:14

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis3:15

It has very different characters. It's my old Guardanini cello from 1745, which I played for a long time and I now share with one of my best friends, who's called David Waterman. And then I'm trying to buy a Montagnana cello from 1740. It's much tougher than the album. I mean, they really do have these incredibly different characters. And then the Nippon Music Foundation of Japan have, for the past eight years, loaned me a Stradivarius from 1730, which is a beautiful instrument, a sort of dreamy, delicate, poetic instrument. I love it. So, yes, I got a complicated love life when it comes to cellos.

Presenter3:49

I mean, I should mention at this point that you you have a long term partner, you have a son, but the way you talk about these instruments, it's as though you have a I wouldn't dare say an equal relationship with them, but it's clearly a a very deep significant connection.

Steven Isserlis4:02

It is. Um I very much feel that the cello is part of me when I play. And yes it is like a marriage, and yet I don't think I can be accused of adultery.

Presenter4:11

Tell me about your first piece of music, then.

Steven Isserlis4:14

It is our piece then.

Steven Isserlis4:17

Adore, it's a Schubert Fantasia for piano duet, and I remember when I first heard this piece.

Steven Isserlis4:24

I've gone to heaven.

Presenter5:24

Murray Pariah and Radhu Lupu playing part of Schubert's piano duet, Fantasia, in F minor. You were listening, not surprisingly, intently there, and I'm I was wondering, as I was watching you listen to that, if it is more satisfying for you to be

Presenter5:38

in conversation, if you like, with music, than it is to be in conversation with a person.

Steven Isserlis5:43

No. Well it depends which person and which music music you love.

Presenter5:45

It's

Presenter5:46

Music you love, I'm talking about.

Steven Isserlis5:47

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis5:49

Never tire of listening to music. It's part of the fabric of my life, it really is.

Presenter5:53

I'm going to ask you about your childhood. We we touched on it a moment ago. But first of all I'd like to ask you about your your grandfather. Tell me about him. He seems to have been an extraordinary man.

Steven Isserlis6:00

Yeah, he was lovely I think. He was a pianist. He was born in Kishinov in 1888. And he was, I think, the youngest professor ever appointed at the Moscow Conservatoire, I think that's right. And there were twelve musicians allowed to leave the Soviet Union, the first twelve, with their families for six months from the Soviet Union to tour abroad and show the world what a great cultural place the Soviet Union was. Of course not one of them ever went back, and one of them was my grandfather.

Presenter6:27

And this was in the very early twenties.

Steven Isserlis6:29

And then in 23 he was on his way to America, but he went via Vienna and he went to Vienna and people said you should stay here. And when they got to Vienna they were looking for an apartment. My father vaguely, vaguely remembers it, that they went to this apartment, there was an old Hausfraus showing them around. She was 102 years old and she ruffled my father's hair, was very friendly.

Presenter6:29

We need two or two left, yeah.

Steven Isserlis6:53

And then my grandfather said, Well, the only thing is, I'd love it, I like this apartment, but I'm a musician. Is it okay if I practice? and she suddenly went absolutely furious, said, No, I hate musicians. I said, Why? I said, Well, because when I was a little girl, my great-aunt had a lodger who was a filthy old man who used to spit all over the floor. My grandmother said, Who was that? Beethoven

Steven Isserlis7:15

So I reckon, because my father is now ninety, I think he might be the last person alive who met somebody who met Beethoven.

Presenter7:20

Remarkable. And and the family heritage itself, how important is it to you? I mean, how aware were you of it as a little boy, this Russian Jewish heritage? Was it around? Was it spoken of? Was it celebrated?

Steven Isserlis7:30

Well, my father and grandfather were always very keen on any Russian musician they heard on the radio or anything else. And yeah, I think I I certainly feel a strong connection with Russian music. And as for being Jewish, yes, I'm always very conscious of that, without being religious Jew.

Presenter7:45

How did they come, the family, to to find their way into Britain?

Steven Isserlis7:49

Well, nineteen thirty eight, luckily, my grandfather had started his first tour ever of Britain a week before the Anchlus. So he stayed, and then spent some months trying to get my father and grandmother out.

Steven Isserlis8:03

Tell me about your second piece of music, then.

Steven Isserlis8:05

It is some Schumann. I don't know why I'm obsessed with Schumann. I've been obsessed with Schumann for about twenty, twenty-five years. And then I started reading his letters when I was a teenager, and I really thought what a wonderful person he must have been. He's the sort of most neglected of the great composers. But this is a famous piece. This is the opening of his first symphony. I mean, I think, you know, if I have to be on this island all by myself with my own company, which I do not enjoy, I'll need joy to keep me going, and this has it.

Presenter9:37

The opening of Schumann's first symphony in B flat major, played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Raphael Kubelich. You were six years old then, as you say, when you started to uh play the cello seriously.

Presenter9:49

Were you a king pupil at that age?

Steven Isserlis9:51

I think I was, yeah.

Steven Isserlis9:53

But I had a sort of local teacher in Easteen until I was about nine or ten, and then I met an extraordinary lady called Jane Cowan.

Steven Isserlis10:02

who was really my main teacher, then stayed with her from the ages ten to seventeen.

Presenter10:06

And what was extraordinary about it?

Steven Isserlis10:08

She just made music come to life, and she made the composer that's probably why I got into reading about the letter so much. She made the composers and their music come to life, so they became friends.

Steven Isserlis10:17

And somehow I I just found I could play better when I was playing to her than any other time, and somehow music just made sense.

Presenter10:23

And what sort of a person was she?

Steven Isserlis10:25

Very, very eccentric, to put it mildly. And she was terrifying. I mean, she could suddenly lose her temper about something, but also just full of wit and imagination and very emotional. I mean, if I played badly, I did feel like a criminal. Not badly technically, but if I played in a way she considered sort of hysterical or unmusical, or you know, then really I suffered. She had a very firm set of sort of moral values in music. And I.

Speaker 110:43

You're not.

Steven Isserlis10:52

I sort of inherited that. I mean, if I hear somebody indulging themselves at the expense of the music, which I do a lot, I get very angry.

Steven Isserlis10:59

Because music is like a religion, you know, and you're a musician, it should be.

Presenter11:02

You've said that. You've said music should be taught like a religion, not a sport.

Steven Isserlis11:06

Yes, really makes to religion and science. It's also very logical.

Presenter11:07

Yeah, it's really good.

Steven Isserlis11:11

There's a lot of teaching now that is all about effect and how you can have success. And that's absolutely not how I was taught by Jane Cowan. It was all about the meaning of the music, and we our task is just to convey that, to be a sort of open window through which the music can fly to its listeners.

Presenter11:28

As a young boy, then, you left your local primary school early. You went to the uh very prestigious City of London school with a very strong music tradition. Did you know by that stage, when you were at that school, that it was only ever going to be a a musical life?

Steven Isserlis11:41

I think I was pretty sure by the time I was ten.

Presenter11:43

And I mean it seems remarkable to me you left school.

Steven Isserlis11:46

But fourteen. Yeah, I mean by that stage I mean that was obviously what I was going to do. And then I moved up to Scotland, to a little village where my teacher had a house.

Presenter11:56

This is Jane Cow.

Steven Isserlis11:57

Yeah, Jenkins.

Presenter11:58

So you left school essentially to study full time? Yeah.

Steven Isserlis12:00

Yeah. And she was in London for a year. And then I went to Scotland for two years, where she had her house and where she took us students. And it was a very hot house atmosphere. Perhaps not the healthiest, but, you know, there was nothing else to do except practice, so I did.

Presenter12:13

And you were one of how many students would have been practising at that time?

Steven Isserlis12:15

Minimum four, maximum twelve.

Presenter12:18

That was

Steven Isserlis12:18

Very intense in this tiny village with about twenty inhabitants. It was sort of like a little commune, I suppose.

Presenter12:24

Given at that age, your musical ability was clearly vastly outstripping the normal progression of these things. Is there was there?

Presenter12:33

Um, any pressure attached to that? Did you feel that the expectation of you was high?

Steven Isserlis12:38

Yes, I think I did, both for my parents and for my teacher.

Steven Isserlis12:42

Yeah, a lot of pressure. Well, still do, I suppose. One does if one's pressured at that age. You feel it later. But it's funny that sometimes when I feel I've been least in control, because I've been so nervous, people seem to like the concert best. My sister pointed that out.

Presenter12:55

Uh do you ever listen to those recordings where you work?

Steven Isserlis12:57

I never listen to recordings of myself. If I can avoid it.

Steven Isserlis13:03

Yeah.

Presenter13:03

Why?

Steven Isserlis13:04

Well, sorry, maybe it's a bit gross, but one musician did describe a musician who listens to their own recordings as a dog who sniffs at his what he's left on the pavement. That's a bit gross, but you know, why would I look at a photo of myself?

Steven Isserlis13:18

I know what I look like, I know what I sound like. I'd much rather listen to somebody else.

Presenter13:22

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Steven Isserlis13:24

Ah, well, another very important part of the fabric of my childhood are the Beatles, like for most people my age. If my hair seems a little on the long side, it's because that idea became implanted in my brain at a very early age: long hair equals happiness. And that comes from the Beatles. And I've chosen this particular song.

Steven Isserlis13:46

Because it reminds me so much of my seventeen-year-old son Gabriel, for obvious reasons.

Speaker 413:57

Can I all the world going by my window?

Speaker 113:58

I all the world going by my wish

Speaker 414:04

Taking my time, lying loud, staring at the ceiling.

Speaker 414:11

Waiting for sleeping feeling

Presenter14:20

The Beatles and I'm Only Sleeping dedicated Stephen Issolis, you say, to Gabriel, your son, for obvious reasons, the teenage Gabriel. And you've played with Paul McCartney.

Steven Isserlis14:25

And for obvious reasons.

Presenter14:29

Well, I'm

Steven Isserlis14:30

Back.

Presenter14:30

Gotcha.

Steven Isserlis14:30

What Um yes, and it's true. I went my our mutual friend, the wonderful composer David Matthews, took me to meet Paul. And I was playing him my sister Annette's arrangements of some Beatles songs, as well as David's arrangement of one of Paul's songs. And one boy said, I've got to get on the drums and accompany him. So we did Got to Get You Into My Life, a cello, drums and piano, and I have a tape of it, which I'm very proud.

Presenter14:55

So you'll make an exception for yourself in that case and listen to something that you've actually played on tape. You're not a musician who's ever played in an orchestra. You're always determined to be a soloist. Why was that?

Steven Isserlis14:57

So get you back.

Steven Isserlis15:05

Well

Steven Isserlis15:06

A soloist and chamber musician, I mean chamber music is equally important to me. I just didn't want to be told how to play, I have to say. And that's why I would find it very hard to play in an orchestra. I do sometimes play in orchestras for for fun, doing the second half of a concert. You know, if I'd done a concerto in the first half and the cellists invite me to play, and that's great fun.

Steven Isserlis15:24

But that's different.

Steven Isserlis15:26

I know I I won't be there the next day.

Presenter15:28

At what age was that that you began your professional life?

Presenter15:32

You were nineteen. And how did it go then, given this determination not to do the things that m most musicians would do, which is, until I get the big break, I will be a jobbing musician? You didn't do that.

Steven Isserlis15:39

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis15:41

No. I couldn't bear to. And I I was lucky I got some financial support from a Dutch trust and from my parents, but not a lot. I was trying to live on six pounds a week for food then, which

Steven Isserlis15:52

At least I lost some weight. That was good. But you know, things happened, but just agonizingly slowly. Basically, I was just waiting for the phone to ring. And then gradually, I suppose around the age of thirty, it's really through other musicians' recommendations, through word of mouth.

Presenter16:06

Uh you skipped through rather lightly there, that that period from the age of nineteen to the age of thirty say, you know, at one point I only had six quid a week to

Presenter16:13

Spend on food, but that is

Presenter16:16

A very unusual set of circumstances that somebody who actually is surviving right on I mean, not quite the breadline, but pretty close to it, six quid a week for food, thinks is steely enough to think, I will not take those jobs, I will not compromise. Those people are few and far between. You must have a

Presenter16:35

A very a very strong core of self-belief to to have uh continued your journey on that way through your twenties.

Steven Isserlis16:42

Well, there's a lot of self doubt, but I did have very supportive family and friends, and I think they carried me through. But it w it was a depressing period when I had just no concerts.

Presenter16:52

Did you have a plan B?

Steven Isserlis16:55

No. When you're on the top of a on a tightrope, I'm sure you don't l look to either side. That's how I felt.

Steven Isserlis17:02

It had to be music. I think, you know, if you're going to be a musician, you really have to have that feeling that it has to be music.

Presenter17:09

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Steven Isserlis17:12

Um well, I don't think I would want to contemplate a life without Monty Python's Flying Circus. I think we need them. So oh, if the previous song was to do with my son, Gabriel, this is definitely a song that belongs to my partner, Pauline.

Speaker 417:28

I'm so worried about modern technology I'm so worried about all the things that they dump in the sea I'm so worried about it worried about it worried worried worried

Speaker 417:52

I'm so worried about everything that can go wrong.

Presenter17:58

Perry Jones and I'm so worried. So it was the composer John Tavener who ended up well not quite coming to your rescue, of course, because you had the talent, but he wrote the Protecting Veil for you. When you first sat down with the score, what did you make of it?

Steven Isserlis18:12

Well, I'd asked John for a ten minute piece for cello and small string orchestra, and then the publisher bought it. This huge score, forty five minutes almost, for cello and huge string orchestra. So um I was surprised.

Steven Isserlis18:28

And then I started looking and I thought this is actually very, very beautiful.

Steven Isserlis18:32

But I did not expect it to be a commercial success in any way. I fell in love with the piece and worked on it very hard, and then expected I'd give the one performance and it would be a flop because it was when it was first programmed was at the proms in the middle of a two and a half hour programme, also including a first performance of a big symphony in the first half, and we were in the second half, so I thought, not a chance. People have gone home, they'll be bored.

Steven Isserlis18:56

And so I was absolutely stunned by the success.

Presenter18:58

You say that composers are at the centre of what I do, and and when you have someone like Tavener there, you can of course call him up or have a meeting, and that's fantastic. But but where do you begin when you don't have the luxury of having the live composer there?

Steven Isserlis19:05

Or have a meeting and that's fantastic.

Steven Isserlis19:11

Well, I'm try to be as thorough as I can, sort of getting to the original source. So I do not believe the published editions necessarily. I try and, if possible, see the manuscript, see the first editions. I mean, I get manuscripts, copies of manuscripts from libraries. Yeah, it's very important to me to get the message, as it were, direct from God, instead of from a vicar or something who was the editor of some publication, some edition. And I know just look at a piece, analyse it somewhat, just look, look, look at it, think about it, and live with it.

Presenter19:44

There's a great in intensity then, inevitably, about the way you work, and there's also a great intensity in the pace of your work. Now, I mean, I I just looking through your schedule for this autumn, winter, by my reckoning you have twenty four separate performances. You say you yes, you do. And you have you say you tr you travel for what about seven, eight months of the year?

Steven Isserlis20:04

Yeah, it says uh

Presenter20:05

Are you afraid to turn work down these days?

Steven Isserlis20:08

Well, yeah, I suppose that's the legacy from my my years without any concerts. I'm very insecure about that. And I well, I do t if I you know, if I feel I've I'm just going to be too tired to play well, so that way I'll turn it down. But if I can do concerts I tend to accept them, probably for insecurity reasons. But I mean, I enjoy practising, I enjoy getting to know these pieces. I mean, I am a bit of a workaholic, but there's genuine enjoyment there. It's a hobby as well as a profession for me.

Presenter20:37

Tell me about your uh next choice then.

Steven Isserlis20:40

Ah, the Saint Matthew Passion by Bach, Bach Relief.

Steven Isserlis20:44

Was God in music, and this movement I find so unbelievably moving. It's sung at the point where Peter has denied Christ. I'm talking not as a Christian, you know, I am Jewish, but I just find the so many he's denied Christ, and the compassion, the guilt, the sorrow, and the just the serenity in this music, I think, really touches on the divine.

Speaker 120:56

Yeah.

Speaker 421:49

Oh my please

Presenter22:08

Andrea Scholl sing Er Barme Dic, Have Mercy, Lord on Me from Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Vocal Collegium of Ghent conducted by Philippe Herrwech. Let's stay with Bach then. We were talking about interpreting the composer's wishes. But what happens when that is a matter of um intense questioning and debate? Uh as in the case of your greatest challenge really, surely, the Bach solo suites.

Steven Isserlis22:33

Yes. Well, the Bach suites are a special case because there's no manuscript. There's four early manuscripts, two of which were done during Bach's lifetime, one by his wife, one by probably a student. So you have to play detective in a way.

Presenter22:33

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis22:46

Just trying to sort of winkle out from these manuscripts what Bach would have written in the original manuscript, what they were copying.

Steven Isserlis22:53

And it seems like they were copying from two different versions, because they're so different.

Steven Isserlis22:57

Ugh, it sort of drove me mad, but it was also absolutely fascinating.

Presenter23:01

The cello suites are described as the equivalent of uh climbing Everest. You're a recording of them. You you began in in two thousand and five, as you say. It happened earlier than you would have chosen, is that right?

Steven Isserlis23:13

Yes, it is true. I mean, I was well already in my late forties, I have to admit, by the time I started, but I probably would have put them off forever. But my father, who was then eighty eight, looked at me very intently and said, I want you to record the Bach Sweets. So

Presenter23:29

I did.

Presenter23:31

And they were received with huge critical acclaim a landmark recording, superb interpretation. And, as he said, you did them for your father in order that he could have the satisfaction of hearing them. What did he make of them?

Steven Isserlis23:43

He's not my sternest critic, I have to say. Good to keep quiet, but it was nice'cause he he particularly loves the sixth of the sixth suites. And so he actually came and spent the day, or however many hours it was, listening to me record that suite. So that was very nice.

Presenter23:58

Another very poignant time for you with regard to your appearance was in nineteen ninety eight. You were awarded the CBE. What happened then?

Steven Isserlis24:08

It was I had to go to the palace to collect it, and it was within a week of my mother dying. She tried to to hang on and be there. She of course I invited her, but she couldn't, so my father came. And um

Steven Isserlis24:22

Yeah, it was sad timing. And that was actually also it was not long after that that I went for that visit to Paul McCartney, and Linda had died fairly recently, so and David Matthews, who introduced us, his first wife, also died, so that I think that's why partly it was such a memorable visit.

Presenter24:39

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Steven Isserlis24:42

Well

Steven Isserlis24:43

Having gone on about how much I love music and everything and how central it is to my life, which is absolutely true, I'm also incredibly ignorant about it.

Steven Isserlis24:51

And even the Beethoven string quartets. I wouldn't of course I heard them all, but I wouldn't say I know them. So this recording I would take in order to get to know them, and I would really hope that inside the C D package would also be a score, so I could actually look at the music and sort of get to know it. It's music I should know,'cause it's music of the spheres.

Presenter26:05

The Bush string quartet and the opening of the Cavatina from Beethoven's String Quartet, number thirteen, in B flat. There seems to me a huge amount of uh purity and intensity in the way that you d you tackle your work, but it's it's not all

Presenter26:19

I don't want to use the word high-minded, but it it might be appropriate. Yeah, I mean, you are quite evangelical about involving children. Why have you felt the need to do that?

Steven Isserlis26:29

Yeah.

Presenter26:29

I did

Steven Isserlis26:30

Really

Presenter26:30

Until my

Steven Isserlis26:30

My son was born, and then in fact he loved music. I mean, he used to listen, sit there listening to me practice, which was so really sweet when he was a baby, all eyes and ears, and he sort of ended up, you know, he'd go around singing tunes of pieces I was practicing, which I found very touching. I mean, it is evangelical. I think it's great for children to have classical music in their lives. A child who is humming Mozart to himself will not be out on the street selling drugs, you know. I mean, a child who is singing.

Speaker 126:53

Draw

Steven Isserlis26:56

Music like that is a happy child.

Presenter26:58

Popularizing the music in in this way then, I mean, how do you generally feel about what is it they call the kind of classical crossover of trying to make classical music

Presenter27:08

uh more palatable and and more consumer friendly.

Steven Isserlis27:11

Yes. I think it's ridiculous. I think they go about it completely the wrong way and it's not about popularizing classical music, it's about making money, unfortunately. I mean, they're just, you know, watering it down. You don't have to water the radical companies and some of the people who play.

Presenter27:18

Money and

Presenter27:21

They they being to

Speaker 127:23

Friendly

Steven Isserlis27:26

Um the play watered down versions of the classics or whatever.

Steven Isserlis27:30

You don't have to apologise for classical music.

Steven Isserlis27:32

Yeah.

Presenter27:32

Of course they, the music uh industry people, the record industry people would say, to have a beautiful girl in a whisper of chiffon coming out of the waves with her violin is going to welcome in people to classical music who otherwise wouldn't be interested, and that can only be a good thing. That that may be their argument.

Steven Isserlis27:48

Well, I don't mind about the cover. I mean, I'm nothing against beautiful girls whatsoever, chiffons or whatever. It's the music they record. I you know, the sort of soppy arrangements of of beautiful tunes from from great pieces of music. Why not just have the beautiful tunes in their real context? They're much, much more moving and important in that way. Music speaks to people, great music speaks to people. And okay, we do do often have older audiences, so people come to the music older, that's fine. But if they can be given it as children, it'll be it'll enrich their whole lives.

Presenter28:18

So Stephen, we'd never be likely to see you on the stage at the classical Brits in a pair of leather pants with a wind machine blowing your curls as you play with the smoke around your heels.

Steven Isserlis28:27

I think it'd be extremely unlikely, especially the leather pants.

Presenter28:30

I thought so. Tell me about your uh next choice.

Steven Isserlis28:34

Ah Well, this is not a very famous record, for some reason, the importance of being Hofnung. He was a cartoonist, of course, he was a music musician, he played the tuber, he loved music, he was an extraordinary man, and very easy man to interview, as I think you can hear.

Speaker 128:48

I'm sorry, I do. What do you think of this weather? I don't like to embarrass you ever, Charles. You don't call you Charles, may I? Yes, indeed.

Steven Isserlis28:53

You don't

Steven Isserlis28:55

Yes.

Speaker 128:56

What do you think of this weather?

Steven Isserlis28:56

What do you think of this weather

Speaker 128:59

Yes, we have. Well, we must talk about something. Couldn't we start with the weather?

Steven Isserlis29:00

We must talk about something. Couldn't we start with the weather?

Speaker 129:04

Do you like the weather?

Speaker 129:06

What can I do for you?

Steven Isserlis29:06

What hell is

Speaker 429:06

Yeah. Yeah. But

Steven Isserlis29:07

Yeah.

Speaker 129:09

Well, I just wondered if we could start talking about the weather. The weather? Yes.

Steven Isserlis29:12

Yeah.

Presenter29:12

Good weather? Yeah.

Speaker 129:14

Do you enjoy this rainy weather that's over?

Presenter29:14

Do you enjoy this rainy weather that we're having?

Speaker 129:18

What do you?

Presenter29:19

Part of Hofnung in conversation with Charles Anderson. So you spend a great deal of the year travelling around about eight months. How much room does that leave for uh for family life?

Speaker 129:25

Uh

Steven Isserlis29:25

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis29:29

Uh

Presenter29:29

But

Steven Isserlis29:30

Yeah.

Presenter29:30

Yeah.

Steven Isserlis29:30

When I'm at home of course I don't it's rare enough I feel I shouldn't go out too much, I spend time.

Steven Isserlis29:36

in the house with the family. Um that it does mean I can't go to many concerts in London, I can't see friends as much as I'd like to. But I th on the other hand I see friends all over the world.

Presenter29:46

And your partner pulled in place uh the

Steven Isserlis29:48

The flute she used to play the flute she gave up.

Steven Isserlis29:51

She says she's never regretted it.

Presenter29:53

Do you do you ever play together then? Do you play?

Steven Isserlis29:55

Occasionally we used to when in an attempt to make'cause my son Gabriel plays the cello, in a sort of attempt to get his enthusiasm up for practising, we'd occasionally read something through with me on the piano, trying, and pull in on the flute.

Presenter30:09

And how is Gabriel's cello coming along then? That it must be something of a pressure, having.

Speaker 130:12

Yeah. Something of a

Steven Isserlis30:13

No, he does not feel that pressure. He's doesn't often feel pressure. If he ever practised, he could be very good. If he didn't spend so much time with his ex

Presenter30:22

Yeah.

Presenter30:23

Gabriel, your father's lips are pursed and his face is a little red.

Steven Isserlis30:31

Well, occasionally. Yes, it's awful to see a child uh playing computer games, but yeah, he's a good point.

Presenter30:37

Um I'm casting you away, of course, on this desert island. Well, I'm going to. Will that be difficult for you?

Steven Isserlis30:44

Oh, impossible. I hate my that's one difficult thing about travelling. I say I can see friends all over the world, and that's great when I see friends, but I do go to places where I don't know anybody at all, and then I hate that. I loathe that. I don't mind spending the day alone, but if I have to dinner alone as well, that's miserable.

Presenter30:59

Tell me about your final

Steven Isserlis31:00

Yeah.

Presenter31:00

Yes then.

Steven Isserlis31:01

Well, this is an extraordinary disc. It's just something I picked up for ninety nine pence many years ago. Oh, I love the music of Forre, that's who's the composer. My again, Jane Cowan. She adored Forrey, and I've certainly picked that up. He's one of my all time favourite composers. But something about this disc

Steven Isserlis31:19

You know, the organ's a bit out of tune, the solo's a little out of tune, and yet this whoever this Coral Gabriel Foray are, I really don't know anything about them, there's a sincerity to the singing. Actually, when my teacher Jane Cow was in hospital once, having about to have a heart operation, I took her a tape of this and she said it really pulled her through.

Presenter32:35

The Corral Gabriel Foray and Tantum Ergo.

Presenter32:39

So, on this island that you don't want to be on, but essentially you're stuck there, I will give you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you will have to.

Steven Isserlis32:45

Annotated, I hope. Yes, it would be very frustrating.

Presenter32:46

Yes, Abila.

Presenter32:48

You're allowed to take one other book. What will it be?

Steven Isserlis32:48

You're allowed to

Steven Isserlis32:51

Actually, a few years ago it would have been either Wilkie Collins or Dickens, but in the past few years I've discovered Trollope, and I think.

Steven Isserlis32:59

I would feel that I wasn't so alone on the island, because I know all the characters he writes about. These are real people. And I love Trotter, and it's a very sort of new enthusiasm for me. I haven't read that much, so at least I keep busy reading lots more.

Presenter33:12

And what about your luxury?

Steven Isserlis33:14

A huge, huge photo album, because I have a terrible visual memory. I can't remember what anybody looks like or anything. So a vast photo album of all my friends I could just leaf over all the time.

Presenter33:26

I'm astonished, given how close you are to your three wives, the cellos, that you wouldn't take one of them. No.

Steven Isserlis33:34

Probably wouldn't.

Steven Isserlis33:36

I mean it is true I do enjoy practicing and I would miss them horribly, but I think I would miss my family and friends even more.

Presenter33:42

And if you had to choose just one disk, which disk would it be?

Steven Isserlis33:45

Saint Matthew Passion. Has to be that says it all.

Presenter33:49

Stephen Isulis, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been a pleasure.

Presenter34:00

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.