Steven Isserlis’ “Anniversaries” Cello Recital

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, cellist Steven Isserlis presented a recital program for Chamber Music San Francisco entitled 2024 Anniversaries. This year marks the centennial of the deaths in 1924 of two major composers that “transitioned” from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The first of these was Ferruccio Busoni, whose “Kultaselle,” a set of ten variations on a Finnish folk song, began the program. The second was Gabriel Fauré, represented by his Opus 109 (first) cello sonata, composed in the key of D minor. (Fauré was also the “encore composer,” with the selection of his Opus 78 “Sicilienne,” which was later incorporated into his Opus 80 incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande.)

An arpeggione built in 1968 (not performed by Isserlis yesterday afternoon) with its guitar-like frets (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

The program also acknowledged works composed in 1824 by Franz Schubert and in 1924 by Ernest Bloch. The nineteenth-century offering was Schubert’s D. 821 sonata in A minor, originally composed for the arpeggione (a “hybrid” instrument, which was basically a bowed guitar). Bloch was represented by his three-movement suite Pieces from Jewish Life. The remaining work on the program was the final selection, Francis Poulenc’s only cello sonata.

As usual, Isserlis’ performance was as informed as it was spirited. His energetic expressiveness never fails to draw the attentive listener into the “engine room” of every work he selects for performance. The result is a perfectly balanced account of not only the “big picture” but also the many subtle “brush strokes” that bring the picture into being. That capacity to express detail was, as in the past, enhanced through the long-term chemistry that has emerged between him and his accompanist at the piano, Connie Shih.

Isserlis also deserves credit for his chemistry with his audience. The good news is that he does not try to account for each selection with an introductory mini-lecture. Rather, he homes in on a few specific items, which he feels are worth sharing. These inevitably provide useful orientation for a listener encountering a composition for the first time. My guess is that those familiar with the cello repertoire were in a minority yesterday, but they seemed consistently as attentive to everything that Isserlis presented as the more “seasoned” listeners were. Such chemistry is ultimately in the hands of the performer, and Isserlis could not have handled it better.