BY MIRANDA ILCHEF, LEAD WRITER
This October, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will have the great fortune of welcoming one of the greatest cellists and musicians alive today, Steven Isserlis, to perform Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto.
The piece has an intriguing origin story, with the original cellist (and the work’s dedicatee) Mstislav Rostropovich having learnt it in four days. Steven has a slightly longer history with this piece, having first played it in the 1980s and many times since then. When we spoke, he told me that its first outing left a little to be desired, at least by his standards, and called that initial performance “very bad”. In the years since, he has gone on to analyse, dissect and understand the work in more detail.
Particularly in recent decades, Shostakovich’s music has oft been painted with the broad brush of being inherently politically, which can lead to reductive interpretations of pieces like the Cello Concerto. But Steven sees Shostakovich’s music as ultimately multi-faceted.
“There is drama, there is excitement and there is classical discipline,” Steven says.
“He’s a very classical composer, and yet he’s also a romantic. Rostropovich called him a ‘crazy Romantic’. As a pianist, Shostakovich loved to play the Romantic cello sonatas: Rachmaninov, Chopin and Grieg.”
He describes the Cello Concerto as “a great work”.
“It is tragic – one feels it tells an awful story — and yet it is incredibly enjoyable, which is often the case with Shostakovich. He manages to make these tragedies exciting and satisfying to listen to. There’s nothing depressing about it.”
Steven hasn’t listened to the Rostropovich recording for many years, in order to avoid the risk of imitation.
“It’s great – what he did was amazing, but we don’t need an imitation of that. Each player should have their own relationship to the score.”
Steven’s emphasises the importance of adherence to the original score, which he notes is quite explicit in the case of the Shostakovich concerto. It leaves little room for interpretation. Most of the piece, he notes, is “very strict, very disciplined, and very precise”. But that hasn’t stopped him from developing his own personal reading of the work, which is quite visual.
“In the case of this concerto, I do have an image of a machine in my mind – a cruel machine in the distance, coming closer and closer.
“The second movement is the human. It has a romantic heart, and three separate themes that need to be characterised – it’s like having three characters on the stage. At the end of the third movement, the machine destroys the individual completely.”
The last movement is particularly intense. I ask if it is exhausting to play, and Steven explains that while it isn’t necessarily tiring, that there is a physical strain on the bow arm as the cellist must stay so loud for so long.
When it comes to the rehearsal process, and collaborating with the orchestra, Steven says he “likes to do it like chamber music”.
“The conductor and the players bring their own input, and so do I. It would be boring to take a prefabricated interpretation everywhere. I’ll be influenced by what I hear behind me [in the orchestra].”
The selection of pieces for Isserlis’ two October concerts also includes Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No.7, Yasushi Akutagawa’s Triptyque for String Orchestra, and a new MSO commission by homegrown composer Naomi Dodd.
The program has a throughline of association with the Soviet Union: the opening piece, Akutagawa’s vivaciously rhythmic Triptyque, was published in the Soviet Union after the composer visited illegally in the 1950s from his native Japan.
While in the Soviet Union, he made friends with Shostakovich, whose music (alongside Prokofiev’s) was highly influential on Akutagawa’s creative development.
After Steven performs the concerto, audiences will be treated to the Prokofiev symphony, which was written in 1952, about a year before the composer’s death. For something created so late in life, it is remarkably innocent and playful, while still being full of reminiscence. It draws a stark comparison to darkness of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto, despite coming from a similar place and time. The orchestra will swell back to its full size for this symphony after the reduced personnel required for the first half.
During his life, Steven has spent a lot of time here in Australia, but it has been a while since he has performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
“I was very pleased to be asked to do this, but I wasn’t sure at first if I could go to Australia for just five days. Eventually I gave in and say okay, I’ll do it, because I love Australia so much that I can’t resist. I just love the lifestyle and the food, and I have so many Australian friends.”
Having performed this work so many times, I ask Steven if he ever gets sick of playing it. Outside of his music, Steven is a gifted and published writer, and has answered all my questions most eloquently, peppered with short but thoughtful pauses. But he is quick to answer this question.
“No. Not yet.”
Hear Steven Isserlis perform Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto conducted by Benjamin Northey with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 7.30pm October 3 and 7.30pm October 5 in Hamer Hall.
Steven Isserlis featured image by Satoshi Aoyagi.
