A famed cellist (but an author, scholar and “sleuth,” too) will perform as the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra has its season opening concert this weekend.Steven Isserlis, described as a cellist who performs with a “combination of outgoing flamboyance and introspection,” will accompany the orchestra at the 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, concert at the Civic Center Music Hall.
“He is an original on stage and off,” one critic said.
“As a musician, his probing intellect and brilliant, adventurous mind lead him to hunt up and research unknown, suppressed and lost works with the tenacity of a detective,” the critic said.
“He then goes on to champion them with the zeal of a missionary.”
A native of England, Mr. Isserlis is the youngest in a family of musicians, and it has been said that there is even a connection to Felix Mendelssohn in his family tree, and his grandfather was the Russian pianist, Julius Isserlis, who emigrated from Russia to Vienna in 1923 and then to England.
His first recording was in 1984 of the Brahms sonatas, and did his first concerto record, “The Elgar,” in 1987.
The cellist said his first festival performance (at Wigmore Hall of London) is really what launched his career in a big way.
At that festival he performed Robert Schumann’s complete chamber music works.
At the 2000 Salzburg Festival, the cellist performed the works of Mendelssohn, as well as some of Schumann’s works.
Mr. Isserlis has recorded the complete cello music works by Schumann, including the “Concerto,” an aria with cello obbligato from “The Mass,” and a piece by Woldemar Bargiel.
In the course of his musical detective work, Mr. Isserlis has unearthed some composers who are totally unknown.
One of them is Carl Fruhling, who lived from 1868 to 1937.
“He had a reputation as a chamber music pianist and played with Sarasate, Hubermann, Leo Slezak,” Mr. Isserlis explained, “but had no success at all as a composer.”
Mr. Isserlis said he found more than 100 pieces of Fruhling’s works.
“Though he was very poor and miserable,” Mr. Isserlis said, “his music is quite joyous and very warm-hearted, rather Brahmsian, but not derivative.”
Mr. Isserlis has recorded Fruhling’s and Brahms’ clarinet trios, together with Schumann’s “Fairy Tales.”
