YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Isserlis

lines on the record: 49
first: 2007-12-02
most recent: 2007-12-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, I probably wouldn't. I mean, it is true I do enjoy practicing and I would miss them horribly, but I think I would miss my family and friends even more.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A huge, huge photo album, because I have a terrible visual memory, I can't remember what anybody looks like or anything. So a vast photo album of all my friends. I could just leaf over all the time.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, a few years ago it would have been either Wilkie Collins or Dickens, but in the past few years I've discovered Trollop, and I think I would feel that I wasn't so alone on the island because I know all the characters he writes about. These are real people, and I love Trollop and that's very sort of new enthusiasm for me. I haven't read that much, so at least I keep busy reading lots more.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is an extraordinary disc. It's just something I picked up for ninety nine pence many years ago. Oh, I love the music of foray, that's who's the composer, not my again Jane Cowan, she adored Fore, and I've certainly picked that up. He's one of my all time favourite composers. But something about this disc, the organ's a bit out of tune, the solo's a little out of tune, and yet there's whoever this Coral Gabriel Fore, I really don't know anything about them. There's a sincerity to the singing. Actually, when my teacher Jane Cow was in hospital once having but a heart operation, I took her a tape of this and she said it really pulled her through.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh impossible I hate my am That's one difficult thing about travelling I say I can see friends all over the world and that's great when I see friends but I do go to places where I don't know anybody at all and then I hate that I loathe that I don't mind spending the day alone but if I have to dinner alone as well that's miserable”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something of a pressure having no, he does not feel that pressure. He doesn't often feel pressure. If he ever practiced, he could be very good. If... You didn't spend so much time at his Xbox.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Play occasionally, in an attempt to make'cause my son Gabriel plays the cello, in a sort of attempt to get his enthusiasm up for practicing, we'd occasionally read something through with me on the piano trying and falling on the flute.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I'm at home, of course, it's rare enough I feel I shouldn't go out too much. I spend time in the house with the family does mean I can't go to many concerts in London, I can't see friends as much as I'd like to. But on the other hand, I see friends all over the world.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah well, this is not a very famous record for some reason the importance of being hoffening. He was a cartoonist or he was music, musician he played a tube, he loved music, he was an extraordinary man, very easy man to interview, as I think you can hear.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why, I don't mind about the cover. I mean, I'm nothing against beautiful girls whatsoever. Chiffons or whatever. It's the music, they record, you know, the sort of soppy arrangements of beautiful tunes from great pieces of music. Why not just have the beautiful tunes in their real context much, much more moving and important in that way? Music speaks to people, great music speaks to people, and okay, we do often have older audiences, so people come to the music older, that's fine. But if they can be given it as children, it'll enrich their whole lives.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The record companies and some of the people who play watered-down versions of the classics or whatever. You don't have to apologize for classical music.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it's ridiculous I think you go about it completely the wrong way and it's not about popularizing classical music, it's about making money unfortunately they're just watering it down. You don't have to water”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I didn't really until my son was born, and then that he loved music and used to listen sit there listening to me practice, which was sobbably sweet when he was a baby, all eyes nears, and he sort of ended up, you know, you go around singing tunes of pieces I was practicing, which I found very touching. I mean,'tis evangelical, I think it's great for children to have classical music in their lives, a child who is humming Mozart to himself will not be out on the streets selling drugs, you know, I mean a child who is singing music like that is a happy child.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, having gone on about how much I love music and everything and how central it is to my life, which absolutely true, I'm also incredibly ignorant about it. And even the Beethoven string quartets, I wouldn't of course have heard them all, but I wouldn't say I know them. So this recording I would take in order to get to know them, and I would really hope that inside the CD package would also be a score so I could actually look at music and sort of get to know it. It's music I should know because it's music of the spheres.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was I had to go to the palace to collect it, and was within a week of my mother dying she tried to hang on and be there, of course I invited her, but she couldn't, so my father came. And Sad timing and that was actually also it was not long after that that I went for that visit to Paul McCartney and Linda had died fairly recently and David Matthews who introduced us his first wife also died. I think that's why partly was such a memorable visit.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's not my sternest critic to say. Good to keep quiet, but it was nice because he particularly loves the sixth of the six suites. And so he actually came and spent the day or however many hours it was listening. record that sweet that was very nice.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it is true. I mean, I was already in my late forties, I have to admit, by the time I started, but I probably would have put them off forever, but my father, who was then eighty eight. looked at me very intently and said I want you to record the bark sweeps. So I did.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, the Bach suites are a special case because there's no manuscript. There's four early manuscripts, two of which were done during Bach's lifetime, one by his wife, one by probably a student. So you have to play detective in a way, just trying to sort of winkle out from these manuscripts what Bach would have written in the original manuscript, what they were copying. And it seems like they were copying from two different versions, because they're so different. It sort of drove me mad, but it was also absolutely fascinating.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, the Saint Matthew Passion by Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Bach Relieu was God in music, and this movement I find so unbelievably moving. It sung at the point where Peter has denied Christ. I'm talking not as a Christian, I am Jewish, but I just find he's denied Christ and the compassion, the guilt, the sorrow, and just the serenity in this music I think really touches on the divine.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, I suppose that's the legacy from my years without any concerts. I'm very insecure about that. Well, I do if I you know, if I feel I'm just going to be too tired to play well, so that way I'll turn it down, but if I can do concerts, I tend to accept them, probably for insecurity reasons. But I mean, I enjoy practicing, I enjoy getting to know these pieces. I mean, I am a bit of a workaholic, but there's genuine enjoyment there. It's a hobby as well as a profession for me.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up or have a meeting, and that's fantastic. Well, I try to be as thorough as I can sort of getting to the original source, though I do not believe the published editions necessarily. I try, and if possible see the manuscript see the first editions I get manuscripts, copies of manuscripts from libraries. Yeah, it's very important to me to get the message as it were, direct from God instead of from a vicar or something who was the editor of some publication, some edition. And now just look at a piece, analyze it somewhat, just look, look, look at it, think about it, and live with it.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd ask John for a ten minute piece for cellar and small string orchestra, and then the publisher bought it. This huge score forty five minutes almost, cello in huge string orchestra. So I was surprised, and then I started licking. That's actually very, very beautiful. But I did not expect it to be a commercial success in any way. I fell in love with the piece and worked on it very hard, and then expected I'd give the one performance it would be a flop because it was first programmed was at the proms in the middle of a two and a half hour program also including a first performance of a big symphony in the first half and we were in the second half so I thought not a chance people have gone home they'll be bored and so I was absolutely stunned by the success”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think I would want to contemplate a life without Monty Python's flying circus. I think we need them. So if the previous song was to do with my son, Gabriel, this is definitely a song that belongs to my partner Pauline.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're on the top of a tightrope, I'm sure you don't look to either side. That's how I felt. It had to be music. I think if you're going to be a musician Really, you have to have that feeling that it has to be music.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's a lot of self-doubt, but I did have very supportive family and friends. And I think they carried me through, but it was a depressing period when I had just no concerts.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I couldn't bear to I was lucky I got some financial support from a Dutch trust and from my parents but not a lot I was trying to live on six pounds a week for food which at least I lost some weight that was good but things happened but it was agonizingly slowly basically I was just waiting for the phone to ring and then gradually I was around the age of thirties really through other musicians recommendations through word of mouth”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well the soloist and chamber musician, I mean chamber music is equally important to me. I just didn't want to be told how to play I have to say that's why I would find it very hard to play in an orchestra. I do sometimes play in orchestras for fun during the second half of the concerts if I'd done a concit in the first half and the cellists invite me to play and that's great fun but that's different I know I won't be there the next day”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For obvious reasons. Well, I met him once yes, and it's true I went our mutual friend, the wonderful composer David Matthews, took me to meet Paul, and I was playing him my sister, Annette's arrangements of some beetle songs as well as David's arrangement of one of Paul's songs. One place said, I've got to get on the drums and accompany him, and so we did got to get you into my life, a cello drums and piano, and I have a tape of it, which I'm very proud.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, well, another very important part of the fabric of my childhood. The beetles, like most people my age. If my hair seems a little on the long side, it's because that idea became implanted in my brain at a very early age. Long hair equals happiness, and that comes from the beetles. And I've chosen this particular song because it reminds me so much of my seventeen year old son Gabriel, for obvious reasons.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never listened to recordings of myself if I can avoid it. Well, sorry, maybe it's a bit gross, but one musician did describe a musician who listens to their own recordings as a dog who sniffs at what he's left on the pavement. That's a bit gross, but you know, why would I look at a photo of myself? I know what I look like, I know what I sound like, I'd much rather listen to somebody else.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I did both for my parents and for my teacher. Yeah, a lot of pressure I still do, I suppose one bells if one's pressured at that age feel it later. But it's funny that sometimes when I feel I've been least in control because I've been so nervous, people seem to like the concert best my sister pointed that out.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Minimum four maximum twelve was very intense in this tiny village with about twenty inhabitants. It was sort of like a little commune, I suppose.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she was in London for a year. And then I went to Scotland for two years where she had her house and where she took us students and in a very hot house atmosphere, perhaps not the healthiest, but you know, there was nothing else to do except practice, so I did.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By that stage, it's obviously what I was going to do. And then I moved up to Scotland to a little village where my teacher had a house.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really makes her religion and science. It's also very logical. There's a lot of teaching now that is all about effect and how you can have success, and that's absolutely not how I was taught by Jane Cowan. It was all about the meaning of the music and we our task is just to convey that to be a sort of open window through which the music can fly to its listeners.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very, very eccentric to put it mildly, and she was terrifying when she could suddenly lose her temper about something, but also just full of wit and imagination, and very emotional, even if I play badly, I did feel like a criminal, not badly technically, but if I played in a way she considered, sort of hysterical or unmusical or then really I suffered. She had very firm set of sort of moral values in music. And I sort of inherited that. I mean, if I hear somebody indulging themselves at the expense of the music, which I do a lot, I get very angry. This music is like a religion. You're a musician it should be.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extraordinary butter. She just made music come to life. She made the composer. That's probably why I got into reading about the letter so much. She made the composers and their music come to life, so they became friends, and somehow I found I could play better when I was playing to her than any other time, and so our music just made sense”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I was, yeah, but I had a sort of local teacher in East Jean till I was about nine or ten, and then I met an extraordinary lady called Jane Cowan, who was really my main teacher. I then stayed with her from ages ten or seventeen.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is some Schumann. I don't know why I'm obsessed with Schumann. I've been obsessed with Schumann for about 20, 25 years. And then I started reading his letters when I was a teenager, and I really thought what a wonderful person he must have been. He's the most neglected of the great composers. But this is a famous piece. This is the opening of his first symphony. I mean, I think if I have to be on this island all by myself with my own company, which I do not enjoy, I'll need joy to keep me going, and this has it.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well nineteen thirty eight luckily my grandfather had started his first tour ever of Britain a week before the Anchlus. So he stayed and then spent some months trying to get my father and grandmother out.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my father and grandfather were always very keen on any Russian musician they heard on the radio or anything. And yeah, I think I certainly feel a strong connection with Russian music. And as for being Jewish, yes, I'm always very conscious of that without being religious Jew.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then in 23, he was on his way to America, but he went via Vienna. He went to Vienna and People said you should stay here. And when they got to Vienna, they were looking for an apartment. My father vaguely, vaguely remembers it, that they went to this apartment. There was an old house Fraus showing them around she was one hundred and two years old, and she ruffled my father's hair, was very friendly, and then my grandfather said well, the only thing is I love her, I like this apartment, but I'm a musician, is it okay if I practice? And she suddenly went absolutely furious. I said, No, I hate musicians. I said, Why? Because when I was a little girl, my great aunt had a lodger who was a filthy old man, used to spit all over the floor. Grandma said, Who was that? Beethoven.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was lovely, I think. He was a pianist who was born in Kishinov in eighteen eighty eight, and he was, I think, the youngest professor ever appointed at the Moscow Conservatory, I think that's right. And there were twelve musicians allowed to leave the Soviet Union, the first twelve, with their families for six months from the Soviet Union to tour abroad and show the world what a great cultural place the Soviet Union was. Of course not one of them ever went back, and one of them was my grandfather.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is our peace that I just adore it's a Schubert Fantasia for piano duet, and I remember when I first heard this piece. I've gone to”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is I very much feel that the cello is part of me when I play, and yes,'tis like a marriage, and yet I don't think I can be accused of adultery.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they all have different characters, very different characters. It's my old Guadanini, a cello from seventeen forty five, which I play for a long time and I now share with one of my best friends. It's called David Waterman. And then I'm trying to buy a Montignana cello from seventeen forty, as much tougher than the old I mean they really do have these incredibly different characters, and then the Nipon Music Foundation of Japan have for the past eight years loaned me a Stradivarius from seventeen thirty, which is a beautiful instrument, a sort of dreamy, delicate, poetic instrument. I love it. So yes, I got a complicated love life when it comes to cellos.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, actually, I think when I first started I must have been four or five, and I used to think it was terribly funny to play on the wrong side of the bridge, which makes this horrible squeaky sound, and I wouldn't stop doing that, so they made me stop lessons, and I still remember lying on the floor and crying my eyes out, feeling so humiliated. It must have been quite a moment for me still to remember it, and then so they sent me back when I was six and grown up, and of course by then I was dying to play the cello, to redeem myself”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I certainly don't remember any sort of life without music, because my father played the violin and my mother was a piano teacher, so I think I would go to sleep as a baby all suddenly as a little child to the sound of them practising. We were surrounded by music, uncle.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had the standard in Monteria, whom I adored. Still adore. And he would how along when we practised, but particularly as a Mozart piano sonata in C major, he would howl to that unfailingly, and if we change key from C major to B major or C sharp major, he would stop. He was obviously. His cords were touched by C major. He was quite a stern critic.”
2007-12-02 · Desert Island Discs · Steven Isserlis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source