A musician who strongly believes in balance, his strong ideas held with fervent conviction is balanced with his effable charm and a sense of easiness that makes him a very down to earth man. This ‘balance of approach’ can be seen in his playing - balance between playing the score accurately yet being spontaneous, between projecting his cello's ‘voice’ to the audience and at the same time achieving an intimate voice

Born in England in 1959, Isserlis comes from a family of musicians, and on a branch faraway on the family tree, counts Felix Mendelssohn as a “very distant cousin”. Taught under the guidance of Jane Cowen, he developed a holistic approach to studying music. Cowen taught him first off, that learning the cello was “easy!”, and at that tender age, he says he just believed her and plunged straight ahead. And unlike many teachers of string instruments, this “it is easy” mentality stood him well, as he notes it doesn’t turn the students against their music.

Cowen, who passed away at age of 79, could be regarded as unorthodox in her ‘holistic’ teaching methods. She gave her students a musical context to play to, and any technique was directly linked to music. And Isserlis still practices this up till today. When interpretating any new piece of music, he tries it on the piano, then the cello, fingering and bowing it, building up a relationship with the piece, almost like getting to know a person he adds, being more comfortable with a person slowly and intimately.

And it is only when the piece is known so intimately can he successfully convey the music across to the audience. Here he pauses, and then launches into the crisis of modern performances – the tendency of modern performers to play only with the aim of getting a standing ovation. This does not prove anything about the success of the musician, no, only success from the public. And this is not the overriding concern of music, he adds, it only cheapens it. “One has to be a musician because one has to be a musician.”

You know he has given the “for music sake vs. for public sake” debate a lot of thought, as this arises later on again. Lamenting about the increasing sizes of concert halls these days, he adds furtively that “well, one can’t simply play louder and louder to suit the concert hall, can one…”. This “modern curse”, as he puts it, just means that the audience simply has to really listen to the piece. Projection of the cello is one thing, getting inside the music is another.

Isserlis, when playing at the Esplanade, obliged to a request by the SSO to play the Elgar cello concerto. Music for public sake I ventured to ask? Well not quite. Dvorak, Elgar, Bach (his personal God if God were to be a man), Mozart, Brahms, these are all great music for all time, profound and timeless. And this makes even more sense when he adds that the greatest contribution he can give to the music world is to inspire people to love music more, bringing more people to love music for music’s sake.

Already he has somewhat done this, when he wrote Why Beethoven Threw the Stew, a collection of stories about histories of composers meant for children, or more specifically, his son, then 9 when he wrote it. The book has since been helpful to many, adults and children alike, as an informative and light-hearted read to give these “dead white men” composers character. These “dead white composers” will always be in the centre of his repertoire, he adds, great music is very much universal.

That said, he goes on to ‘gushes’ (if I may have the liberty to use that word), about the upcoming Proms Concert in England come September, where he will be playing lesser known works, like Michael Berkeley’s Secret Garden and Bridge’s Oration - Concerto elegiaco for cello and orchestra.

Well, that and David Matthews, which he is beginning to investigate. His concertos, along with Piotr Tchaikovsky’s works written for Rostropovich, are just some works we can look forward to from Isserlis.