Cellis Isserlis' Energy Breaks Bowstrings

Author: Ricahd Lawless

Steven Isserlis's performance at Middlebury College's Center for the Arts (CFA) this past Friday was nothing short of stunning.
The acclaimed cellist played with such passion and beauty that concert-goers simply sat in awe, taking in the spectacular delivery of the music with marked amazement.
Greeting the packed CFA Concert Hall with cordial bows, Isserlis, accompanied by pianist Pascal Devoyon, took a moment to tune his 1730 Stradivarius cello (on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation of Japan) before diving into the first of the evening's four pieces, Camille Saint-SaÎns's "Sonata No.1 for Cello and Piano, Op. 32," with dramatic flair.
The cellist struck the instrument with such force on the very first note that he broke one of his bowstrings.
Minor chords abounded during the sonata as Isserlis slowly swept up scales over the soothing murmur of the piano behind him.
After an extended up-tempo section, the piece switched gears into a lilting melody, as ominous sixteenth notes swirled about. The next movement commenced at a more relaxed, andante tempo.
Characterizing the movement was a marching rhythm that was alternately shared by the piano and the cello - while one instrument continued the propulsive rhythm, the other sung a graceful melody.
Beginning with a sudden flurry of minor key notes from the piano, the succeeding movement was noticeably faster and more intense than the preceding two.
The instruments spiraled upward in amazing unison before plunging into a chaotic flood of minor-key passages. The forceful and dramatic ending of the sonata involved Isserlis reaching a climactic frenzy with the cello, violently pushing the instrument to its extremes.
Isserlis addressed the audience about the concert's second piece, Gabriel FaurÈ's "Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 117." The piece was written in the twilight of FaurÈ's life, when he was almost completely deaf.
Nevertheless, FaurÈ achieves a surrealistic beauty with the music, and as Isserlis described, the piece "never touches the ground."
The first movement was a canon, with the piano beginning and the cello following and echoing the piano.
Thought by many to be the highlight of the performance (though asserting that there was only one highlight would be doing Isserlis a grave injustice), the breathtaking second movement began with an elegant and mesmerizing theme played by the cello.
Isserlis barely looked at the music on the stand in front of him or at the cello, instead closing his eyes and moving his hand up and down the neck of the instrument with unwavering confidence. The melody glided through the minor chords of the piece, which ended with a subtle slip into a major chord. The third piece of the evening was Claude Debussy's "Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor". Easily the shortest composition of the evening, Debussy's piece was characterized by intense passages of dissonance and sudden rhythm changes.
The piece began with the piano playing alone, with Isserlis jumping on an unusual beat. The music swayed, almost coming to a complete stop before the cellist resurrected it with a swift series of notes.
The first movement ended with an ominous section of low cello notes complemented by whole-tone scale variations on the piano, leading the way for the pizzicato-characterized second movement. While Isserlis plucked strange melodies on his instrument, the piano similarly echoed these melodies with staccato notes.
CÈsar Franck's "Sonata for Violin and Piano in A" was the final, and most extensive piece, of the performance. The piece in five movements was packed full of dynamic flourishes and melancholic melodies sung by the cello over the subdued trickle of the piano.
The third movement quickened the adagio pace of the preceding two movements, with Isserlis offering up emotional bursts of notes from the cello, finishing with a grandiose series of arpeggios that almost felt like the ending of the entire piece. The fourth movement directly contrasted with the preceding one - a wilting cello solo and a tranquil grace. Reviving the energy of the third movement, the final installment of the sonata was played in forte, with the cello soaring over the major and minor chord interplay of the rumbling piano.
Isserlis was completely immersed in the music at this point, his eyes closed, and hands moving with fascinating agility and accuracy over his instrument. One concert-goer described it as a "storm of limbs around the cello." Isserlis, shaking with passion, finished first, the piano shortly following, and was rewarded with an extended and roaring applause.
For an encore, the cellist played FaurÈ's brief "Sicilienne, Op. 78." The piece was ideal to end the concert, as its gentle, peaceful harmonies captured and summed up the thrilling beauty of the previous two hours.