Cello at Carnegie Hall: Isserlis & St. Luke's

Breguet Clock in Carnegie Hall lobby. Photo: LB

The cello music theme has captured my attention since the recent Bargemusic concert. After that performance I remembered how during my brief sojourn in Seattle in 2004 I was lucky to hear two major cellists – Mstislav Rostropovich and Steven Isserlis – at the acoustically excellent Benaroya Hall. 

I was still reminiscing about the Seattle performances, when I discovered that Isserlis was about to play in New York City with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s on June 1. Originally this concert was supposed to be held on November 1, 2012, but at that time the area around Carnegie Hall was threatened by the dangling arm of the construction crane damaged by Hurricane Sandy and the concert was postponed. This was too much of a coincidence and too good a story to be missed, so I marched to Carnegie Hall.

A short note was enclosed with the playbill: it was Isserlis's dedication of his performance of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 to the memory of János Starker, one of the greatest cello players and pedagogues of the 20^th century, who died on April 28 this year at the age of 88. A prolific concert performer and recording artist, Starker nevertheless believed that he was “put onto this Earth to be a teacher" and for 55 years taught at the Indiana University School of Music.

Isserlis’s note described Starker as “a lovable and irreplaceable human being”, whose “dry wit masked a heart of gold,” – a description that immediately conjures up an image of a fierce old devil, who was as unapologetic about dispensing his opinion as he was disciplined and reserved, almost austere, in his cello playing. Starker’s performance of Kodaly’s impossible sonata reminds me of this maestro:

Kyuzo, master swordsman in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Screenshot 

With his flamboyant stage manner, fondness of Romantic music, especially Schumann, and a wild mane of graying curls, - a hairstyle that in North America is forgiven only to the likes of Einstein, Brian May, and Sir Simon Rattle, - Steven Isserlis is Starker's opposite. But like Starker, Isserlis is a singular personality, who is not shy about putting his stamp on whatever he does, be it performing, recording, teaching or even penning children’s books.

Isserlis is certainly a man of lively mind, curiosity, imagination, knowledge, enthusiasm for music, and indisputable cultural and emotional wealth. In one interview, he conceded that he is probably driven by his ego – which is not at all difficult to believe – however, he has enough depth and complexity to inform his interpretations. If you don’t let his onstage theatrics distract you, you will see that Isserlis is a thoughtful performer who possesses thorough understanding of music and shows respect for the composer and his fellow performers.

Isserlis’s current concert instrument is the Marquis de Corberon Stradivarius 1726, although he uses other instruments for his recordings. This cello is owned by the Royal Academy of Music, only the fifth owner after the family of the good Marquis, who perished in the French Revolution. In recent times this instrument was played by Zara Nelsova, a prominent cellist and a professor at Julliard for forty years. The selection of wood for this instrument reads like a description of a magic wand in Mr. Ollivander’s shop in Harry Potter: top – spruce, back and ribs – willow, scroll – beech. And, of course, the core of dragon heartstring. Or rather, strings with the core of sheep gut.

Isserlis is an enthusiastic proponent of aluminium-wound sheep gut strings, which he claims give the cello a more expressive, live sound. My unsophisticated ear cannot quite appreciate these benefits. Both in 2004 in Seattle, when Isserlis played Schumann’s Concerto, and this time with Haydn I thought that his cello sounded dark, as if its sound was enveloped in smoke, although the spare orchestration of Haydn’s concerto (2 oboes/2 horns/strings) allowed the cello to come through even in a large auditorium. Sometimes gut strings make “gasping” sound at the moment when the bow first touches them; this "gasp" becomes particularly prominent in the lower register. Gut strings also appear to be quite inertial and “sticky” or “viscous”, which occurs, as it seems, because it takes longer to stop their vibration. They are also not very powerful, which may become a problem in large auditoriums or when performing with a piano.

Back in 2004, Isserlis was still using the De Munck 1730 Stradivarius, which belongs to the Nippon Music Foundation and in the past had been played by Emanuel Feuermann, Isserlis’s “grandfather” in terms of cello lineage: Feuermann had taught Jane Cowan, “a mad genius” Scottish cello pedagogue, who would later become Isserlis’s teacher. Isserlis's real life pedigree is also musically distinguished: his grandfather, Julius Isserlis, was a pianist and composer; his father played violin and his mother was a piano teacher; and his two sisters are professional musicians playing violin and viola.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which has been a fixture of the New York music scene for almost forty years, played with relaxed enjoyment. Their playing was a faithful expression of the humorous credo once formulated by the conductor Nicholas McGegan: “Basically, if the musicians are having a good time, there’s some hope that the performance will be enjoyable.” I haven't heard this music in a long time and was surprised by the feeling of ease, pleasure, health, and naturalness with which the D concerto flowed, although I am sure it feels quite different for the soloist. There was certainly the spirit of good will, mutual respect, and good humor between the soloist, orchestra, and the conductor. 

Haydn cello concertos took a long time to find their way from obscurity to fame. The D major concerto (1783) was first attributed to Antonin Kraft, the principal cellist of the Esterhazy orchestra, which Haydn headed for almost thirty years. In the 1950s, Haydn’s autographed manuscript of this concerto was discovered in Vienna and doubts about authorship of this piece were mostly put to rest (see also a fascinating story in a book about Feuermann by Annette Morreau). It is now believed that Haydn consulted Kraft while writing the solo parts of this concerto, which was clearly meant to be performed by a cellist equally adept at playing the virtuoso parts in the first and third movements and the melodic passages in the second movement.

The concerto in D was considered the only Haydn's cello concerto until 1961, when an earlier concerto in C major, written around 1761-65, was discovered in Prague after two hundred years of oblivion. Another cello concerto in the Hoboken catalog is attributed to Haydn (Hob. VIIb:4 also in D), but its authenticity has not been established. 

Also performed were Mozart’s Symphony 29 and ballet music from Idomeneo as well as Haydn's Symphony 99. Mozart did not inspire any rational thoughts in my head other than, "Mozart must be played regularly for the sake of maintaining health and sanity." I also pondered a meditation task that I received recently: to write a piece about the importance of creating beauty and expressing it through works of art and the benefits of this activity for physical and mental health. 

Haydn’s Symphony 99 (E flat) is a testament to these health benefits: most Romantic composers did not last beyond 9.5 symphonies, while Haydn was still going strong at his 99th. Symphony 99 contains sound effects, created mainly by the woodwinds, which sound very contemporary and which then playfully develop into a more familiar Haydn style with wonderful contrapuntal inventiveness and a minuet that seems to have been written after a glass or two of good wine. Now comparing other performances with the one delivered by the St. Luke's Orchestra, I realize that yesterday the symphony was played with a light and tactful touch. 

Here is also Rostropovich's brawny performance of the Cto. No. 2 in D and Symphony 99 Wiener Philharmoniker/Giulini.