Steven Isserlis on performing with SCO principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev: 'I call him the Duracell bunny'

Cellist Steven Isserlis will perform in the opening concerts of the SCO's 2024/25 season | SCO

He’s one of Britain’s most famous, and most immmediately recognisable classical musicians. But quite apart from the trademark tousled mop of hair, which every interview seems obliged to mention, what sets cellist Steven Isserlis apart is his incisive, probing intellect, and his undeniable passion for speaking and writing about music – as well as the small matter of playing it, of course.

“I love writing about music – that really comes from the same place as playing and teaching,” Isserlis explains. “It’s all about communication. I just love music so much, and I suppose I want to share that passion.”

His passions are clearly ignited by particular areas of the repertoire. In the past he’s championed somewhat neglected composers Robert Schumann and Gabriel Fauré, both in performance and on disc. He was a long-standing friend and collaborator of visionary British composer John Tavener – indeed, it was Tavener’s luscious, meditative The Protecting Veil that shot Isserlis to serious chart success in 1992. More recently, he has also been a champion of the music of younger British composer Thomas Adès, and has performed and recorded with Adès at the piano. To launch the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s season in September, however, Isserlis turns his attention to another much-loved musical figure – Antonín Dvořák – across three all-Dvořák concerts in Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Even those who aren’t classical devotees will surely be familiar with Dvořák’s music. Anyone of a certain age will almost certainly remember the slow movement of Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony as the rich, moving music behind the iconic ‘boy on the bike’ advert for Hovis bread (directed by one Ridley Scott, no less). It was a somewhat ironic musical choice, however: what the composer was conjuring had nothing to do with Yorkshire, and a lot more to do with America (as the Symphony’s nickname suggests). He’d left his home in Bohemia in 1892 to become celebrity director of New York’s newly established National Conservatory of Music, and though he was deeply inspired by the USA, its nature and its music, he also became thoroughly homesick for Europe.

Indeed, the Cello Concerto that Isserlis performs with the SCO dates from the same time in Dvořák’s life. “I think the first glimmers of the piece came to him while he was visiting Niagara Falls. And he wrote it almost entirely in America,” Isserlis explains. Nonetheless, Dvořák used the Concerto to peer distantly back to his beloved Bohemian home – and also to a love from many years earlier. As a young man, Dvořák had been passionately besotted with Josefina Čermáková, one of his piano pupils, but when she didn’t return his affections, he eventually married her younger sister Anna. “When he was writing the Cello Concerto,” Isserlis continues, “he heard that Josefina was seriously ill. So he included the melody of a song he’d written that she particularly liked – called ‘Leave me alone’ – in the slow movement, as a kind of tribute to her. When he finally returned to Bohemia, however, he discovered that Josefina had died. So he reworked the ending of the whole Concerto so that it would return to the song. The piece closes on a far more tragic note than it would have done otherwise.”

Indeed, it makes for a striking and enduringly moving conclusion to a piece that’s otherwise full of colour, drama and optimism. But how important is it for listeners to be aware of this backstory? Isserlis isn’t so sure. “It’s an interesting story, but I think the music speaks for itself. For the performer, though, it’s useful to know when Dvořák is quoting his song, so that you can conjure the right kind of mood.”

Isserlis himself has known the piece for many years. “It’s actually quite embarrassing – I first performed the Concerto more than 50 years ago. My teacher had a festival in Austria, and in 1973 I had the chance to play the piece there – I would have been 14.” Isserlis was well aware of the concerto far earlier, however. “Like most young cellists, I really fell in love with that concerto. I had a recording of Mstislav Rostropovich playing it, with Adrian Boult conducting, and I used to listen to it every day. Years later, I was giving a performance as soloist with Rostropovich conducting, and I told him how much I’d loved his recording as a young player. He just frowned, and said I should have listened to his recording conducted by Seiji Ozawa – much better!”

Alongside his SCO concerts, Isserlis is also performing the work several times across France and Germany during the autumn. Does that mean endless conversations with conductors on matters of interpretation? “I’ve actually marked up a score and I’ve got a list of things that I know I’m going to be asked about. I remember one conductor got very insulted that he was sent this list! But normally conductors can find it very useful – and it helps, of course, if I’ve already worked with the conductor in question.”

One figure that Isserlis feels especially close to, in fact, is the SCO’s principal conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev. “He’s amazing – I call him the Duracell bunny because he’s got so much energy!” Emelyanychev clearly made quite an impression the first time the two men met. “That was at the Glyndebourne opera festival in 2019. Both of my sisters were playing in the orchestra, and Maxim was conducting and playing harpsichord in Handel’s Rinaldo. They told me I had to come and meet him. So we had a brief, somewhat shy tea together. He knew where I was sitting, and in the second half, he was improvising on the harpsichord and I suddenly heard a tune from Elgar’s Cello Concerto wafting across in my direction. I thought to myself: okay, this is a real character!”

Scottish Chamber Orchestra Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh. | Christopher Bowen

Positive personal relationships are clearly important to Isserlis the musician – and, of course, he also has a long-standing musical partnership with the SCO itself. Is that a case of making working together quickler, smoother, simpler? “It’s actually more important to know I’ve got friends in the orchestra – that makes a big difference,” he says.

Indeed, Isserlis’s sometimes disarming honesty about his friendships as well as his musical passions is perhaps another reason behind his enduring popularity – he says what he thinks, and he’s enthusiastic about what he cares about. On his website, he even goes so far as to list a few of his non-musical passions – from the Marx Brothers to Wilkie Collins to good food, for example – as well as a few pet peeves (from TV canned laughter to Delius to tipping, or knowing how much to tip). How important is it that we get to know Isserlis the man alongside Isserlis the musician? “Oh, it’s not important at all,” he laughs. “It’s just that people seem to like to know these things. That’s fine – I’m happy with that. My books and my writing are important, my concerts are important, my teaching is important – knowing what kind of food I like isn’t.”

It’s a fair point, but perhaps he’s also being a bit coy. His public-facing activities – from performing to writing, and also aspects of teaching – are clearly central to his reasons for doing what he’s doing. Perhaps, though, it’s Isserlis’s musical passions – like Dvořák – as well as his enthusiasms beyond music that make him into the rounded, authentic, empathetic figure that listeners clearly feel so eager to engage with.

Steven Isserlis plays Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s all-Dvořák season-opening concerts at Perth Concert Hall, 25 September, The Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 26 September, and City Halls, Glasgow, 27 September, see www.sco.org.uk

The Scotsman is the official media partner of the SCO’s 2024-25 Season. For a 20% discount on tickets, use the code TSMSCO20 when booking – available via venue box offices