Cellist Steven Isserlis is an original on stage and off. As a performer, he combines outgoing flamboyance with inwardness and introspection; as a musician, his probing intellect and brilliant, adventurous mind lead him to hunt up and research unknown, suppressed, and lost works with the tenacity of a detective, and to champion them with the zeal of a missionary. His strong ideas and fervently held convictions give his conversation a formidable rapid-fire impetuosity, but his intensity is tempered by his natural charm and infectious sense of humor. This makes talking with him riveting, enlightening, and delightful.

Next to music, his most consuming passion is books: He reads voraciously, and he has written a children’s book called Why Beethoven Threw the Stew, which tells stories about six composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and Stravinsky. He also writes the liner notes for his recordings, which display both his scholarliness and his wit to fine advantage. He finds time for these literary activities on airplanes and in hotel rooms. When he came to my house for this interview, he seemed drawn to my bookcases; his eager interest in their contents immediately established a broad rapport.

When I met with Isserlis, he was fighting a severe cold, which, he explained, he had caught at Prussia Cove, a chamber music haven in Cornwall. "I was there last week. I go every April for three weeks to teach master classes and in September to play chamber music. It used to be a smugglers' cove, and is named after one whose nickname was King of Prussia. Lots of European chamber groups, especially from Britain, as well as some from America, have passed through there, and most of the teachers are also European. It's the most beautiful place in the world, right at the sea—terrible for the instruments, but gorgeous. It was started in 1972 by Sandor Végh, who gave a concert in Cornwall, fell in love with the place, and said, 'This is where I want to hold my seminar.' I sort of inherited it from him and have been running it as artistic director for about six years; it has a certain musical ideology. The idea of the chamber music part is that some of the April students get invited to play with the visiting older musicians in September. The place is so magical and inspiring that many of them come back every year. It's an important part of my life."

Isserlis was born in England in 1959, the youngest in a family of musicians. There is even a connection to Felix Mendelssohn "through a very distant cousin," Isserlis says. "But it's nice to have him in the family tree." His grandfather was the Russian pianist and composer Julius Isserlis, who was one of the first 12 Soviet musicians who were given permission to travel abroad for six months. "But of course none of them went back. He and his family went to Vienna in 1923 and then emigrated to England. My father tells a story of his childhood in Vienna: He and my grandfather went to one of the innumerable houses where Beethoven had lived, and in an apartment there they found someone who had actually met Beethoven: a 102-year-old Hausfrau, who said, 'Oh yes, I remember him well, a filthy old man, used to spit all over the floor.’" Isserlis' father is an amateur violinist, his mother was a pianist and piano teacher, and his two older sisters play period violin and viola, so, taking up an instrument still missing in his family, he became a cellist.

Steven Isserlis talks eagerly and knowledgeably about everything except himself and his career. His primary teacher was Jane Cowall, who had a reputation not only as a fine pedagogue, but as a bit of an eccentric. Isserlis explains: "That was her character. Music was a religion for her. She was so fanatical about it that she’d attack anybody whose opinions she thought differed from hers. She had studied cello with Feuermann and musicology with Donald Tovey, so that's very much my musical pedigree as well. I went to her when I was ten and stayed till I was 17, and often played for her after that. I think she was a great lady and a wonderful teacher, but perhaps not for everybody."

He wanted to study next with Piatigorsky in Los Angeles, but the famed cellist died that summer. "So instead I went to Oberlin and studied for two years with Richard Kapuczinsky, a lovely man," Isserlis explains. The Oberlin seed had been planted the previous year. "When I was 16," he says, "I took a competition in Bristol. I didn't win, thank goodness; if I had, it would have been a disaster. I should have been pushed into a career. . . . I hate competitions and never tried another, but that one had two good results. I met two people who are still among my best friends: David Waterman, cellist of the Endellion Quartet, and now the guardian of my son, and Steven Doane, who had been living with us for months (I often brought my friends home to stay) and who advised me to go to Oberlin, his alma mater.

He claims that after Oberlin he then went home and waited for the phone to ring. And did it? "Yes, about 11 years later. Oh, it rang before that, but only very occasionally. For a time I gave some concerts at English music clubs, and then I got to know a few musicians. That's always been the way my career has taken off, by word of mouth and through recommendations from other musicians. I was recommended to the Spoleto Festival, and there I met [violinist] Joshua Bell. Then I got to know the Finnish pianist Olli Mustonnen, who recommended me to his management, and that's how the phone gradually started ringing."

It seems hardly to have stopped since, judging from Isserlis’ enormously successful international solo and chamber music career and extensive, wide-ranging discography. His career developed slowly, however, receiving its first impetus from recordings. "I made my first record, the Brahms Sonatas, in about 1984—that's a long time ago, I really want to do them again—and my first concerto record, the Elgar, in 1987. A couple of years later, I got good management. Then I did my first festival. That was the next important step. It set me on a new path and made me realize that other people might be interested in the same things as I."

The festival, held at London's Wigmore Hall, focused on a composer he loves and esteems highly, but considers seriously underrated: Robert Schumann. "We called it 'Schumann and His Circle,' and performed his complete chamber music in 16 concerts over eight days. It took me a year and a half to put it together. I love doing festivals; they give me the freedom to carry out my own programming ideas. We did two series at the Salzburg Festival: Mendelssohn in 1997 and Brahms in 2000, and of course I smuggled in as much Schumann as possible. The Mendelssohn programs were very experimental: 'Mendelssohn and Friends,' 'Mature Masterpieces,' and 'The Last Year,' which ended with his tragic F-minor Quartet, written a few weeks before he died, and his sister Fanny's last song, written the day before she died. Brahms was more difficult to plan, because there's so much, so I divided [the music I wanted to present] into two pairs of concerts, again arranged around his friendships, first with Schumann, then with Dvorák. We included the piano quintet by Josef Suk, which is dedicated to Brahms. One program focused on 'The Death of Schumann,' with several works based on that famous theme he thought had been dictated to him by angels in a dream, though, in fact, he'd already used it twice. (And the strange thing was that neither he, nor Clara, nor Brahms recognized it.) The festival ended very appropriately with that wonderful piece, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

"What I'd really love to do is a Brahms-Schumann series in either 2003 or 2004, focusing on the works that connect the two composers: those that Schumann was working on just before he met Brahms, and Brahms' works inspired by Schumann." And who are "we"? "Oh, my usual partners in musical crime," he says airily. "Josh, Olli, [pianist] Stephen Hough, [violinist] Pamela Frank. . . . These are among my best friends. I always play and record with my friends. We do concerts together, and then we feel it would be nice to record what we performed, so the records are often the outcome of the concerts."

Defender of the Weak, Champion of the Lost

Naturally, Isserlis has recorded Schumann's complete cello music, including the Concerto, the three sets of pieces, an aria with cello obbligato from the Mass, sung by his friend soprano Felicity Lott, and a piece by Woldemar Bargiel, Clara's ,brother whom Schumann championed. "When I was growing up," Isserlis says, "the Concerto was still regarded as a weak piece. For me, it's one of the all-time great masterpieces; I've played it a lot, and it never fails to get to me. The slow movement is pure magic, and it has the most beautiful cadenza. I can't understand why Casals, whom I adore, put a cadenza in there: It already has one, it just happens to be accompanied." Though the Fantasy Pieces were originally written for clarinet and the Adagio and Allegro for horn, Schumann himself authorized the cello versions. Isserlis plays the Adagio at a much slower tempo than a hornist could sustain, however. But when I ask whether a composer would not have a certain speed in mind when writing for a specific instrument, he answers, "Schumann was such an impractical composer that he might very well not have considered what was possible for a hornist. I can't imagine he wanted the piece played as fast as I've often heard it; to me, [that] spoils its beauty. It's a song!" But even a singer would run out of breath at that speed! "True," he laughs. "That's why it's better on the cello—thank goodness we have the cello!"

Isserlis accuses Clara Schumann of laying the groundwork for the low regard in which her husband's late works are held even today. "She was the first to belittle them," he says bitterly. "She refused to publish them, hid them away, tore them up, but a few were saved by Brahms, and in some cases complete sketches survived. Worst of all, she burned the Five Cello Romances; of all the cello pieces that have disappeared, that's the most tragic loss." How does he know all this? "I read biographies, and they contain many letters about Schumann's last works. People say [the pieces] are weak, the products of a sick mind. Rubbish!" he exclaims emphatically. "They are wonderful!" "But surely not all are equally good?" I ask cautiously. "Which would you be referring to?" he asks ominously. I remark that the Finale of the third sonata is practically unplayable, and he bristles. "It's difficult, but it's great, so whimsical and joyous, and no more difficult than the violin concerto, which also remained hidden for ages. I've transcribed the whole piece for cello." I suggest that even the second sonata is not as successful as the first, because, though the two middle movements are beautiful, the two corner movements are so long and discursive. He dismisses that: "You must have heard some bad performances." Isn't the third piano trio less cohesive than the others? He reacts with a forcefulness worthy of Jane Cowall. "Cohesive!" he repeats contemptuously. "It's not meant to be cohesive! It's different, and I love it!"

I ask what other cello pieces have been lost. "There's a Mendelssohn concerto, a Fauré piece, a Dvorák sonata of which the cello part has survived—somebody should supply the piano part—a Brahms duo written when he was 18, so he probably destroyed it himself like so many of his early compositions. He is even supposed to have written, and discarded, a slow movement for the E-minor Sonata, which I've heard was still around in the 1930s; if so, I can't imagine why nobody copied it. It's been suggested that he put it into the F-major Sonata, but I don't believe it, because that slow movement is obviously late Brahms: He couldn't have written it so much earlier." There is also an earlier version of the Richard Strauss cello sonata, which is in the possession of the Strauss family. "They'll show it, and I've been told it looks fascinating," he said, "but they won't allow it to be played because he didn't publish it." What are the differences between the two versions? "He completely rewrote the second and third movements, and it's the rewritten version that we know. But it's full of mistakes and the manuscript's gone, so it's all very frustrating."

One of Isserlis' most interesting finds is an earlier version of Janácek's "Pohádka." His recording of it includes not only the familiar three-movement version of 1923, but also three extra movements discovered later. He explains this rather complicated situation: "When the authorized Janácek edition came out, some copies had an extra movement at the back, some didn't; it was pure chance which [version] one bought. [The extra movement] is beautiful, but he suppressed it and didn't publish it. However, there is also a Presto that was published after his death; a lot of people played it without knowing whether it was part of Pohádka or not. But if you look at the suppressed movement, you realize that it quotes from the Presto, so this is really a five-movement piece. I also have a four-movement version of 1912, which I've actually played; the last movement is as on my record, the first three are different. In performance, I usually do his published version, but it's terrible to waste four extra minutes of beautiful Janácek music."

In the course of his musical detective work, Isserlis has unearthed some composers who are totally unknown but decidedly worth rescuing. One of these is Carl Frühling, "a Viennese Jew who lived from 1868 to 1937," Isserlis explains. "He had a reputation as a chamber music pianist and played with Sarasate, Hubermann, Leo Slezak, but had no success at all as a composer. In a catalog of his works, I found over 100 pieces, but only a few of them ever got performed, and most of them are lost. I have his clarinet trio and his piano quintet, because they were published. Though he was very poor and miserable, his music is quite joyous and very warm-hearted, rather Brahmsian, but not derivative. Now I'm always hoping to meet somebody who remembers Carl Frühling." Isserlis has recorded Frühling's and Brahms' clarinet trios, together with Schumann's "Fairy Tales." He laughs when I protest against his appropriation of the viola part, which he plays with utmost ease and a beautiful sound entirely in the original register. He is not averse to using transcriptions, his own and those of others, especially when authorized by the composer, as in the César Franck violin sonata. "I like it," he says. "It's another piece I want to rerecord. I know there's the danger of losing the sunny quality of the last movement, but one can get around that. However, there's one transcription I don't play anymore: the first Brahms violin sonata; that's really much better on the violin." Isserlis also likes to write his own cadenzas but admits to being guided by the composer. This is illustrated on his recording of Haydn's two cello concertos and the Concertante for violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon. "When I wrote the cadenzas for the concertos," he says, "I had Haydn's own cadenza for the Concertante in front of me on the piano."

The Meaning of Style

On the subject of style, we discuss slides and fingerings, and I tell him I love the way he doesn't slide on his Haydn record. "I certainly wouldn't slide in Haydn," he says, "but there are times when it's absolutely necessary. When I teach, I ask my students whether they are sliding from the heart or from the fingers. You don't slide without a reason; you slide to emphasize an interval or to elide certain notes. Take, for example, the first and second notes of the Beethoven A-major Sonata: It would sound horribly cold to play them across two strings and wouldn't have that feeling of legato. And for that descending fifth in the Elgar concerto it's essential, but it mustn't sound ugly. It's part of a crescendo, and when the slide sounds louder than the note you arrive on, then it's wrong; it's meant to grow toward the resolution. There was a way of playing around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century which sounded as if people were just sliding on one finger; it became meaningless. It was Casals who transformed that style; he slid a lot, more than we do today, but it was wonderful because it had meaning."

At the time of our interview, Isserlis was looking forward to a season he called "busy enough to keep me off the streets." In addition to his usual full schedule of recitals and concerto and chamber music concerts, he hopes to expand his festivals to include orchestral and choral music. Indeed, he has already made a beginning with his most recent project, a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion as part of the Cheltenham Music Festival last July. Isserlis’ two sisters and brothers-in-law, who are also musicians, performed, as did Joshua Bell as concertmaster. Colin Davis, whom Isserlis says he greatly admires, conducted. In addition to handpicking the orchestra, Isserlis himself played the cello continuo role. The concert was a tremendous success. Stephen Johnson of the Guardian called it "beyond doubt the finest I’ve ever heard—technically, emotionally, and spiritually." As Isserlis had predicted, it was "quite an occasion."