A concert billed as ‘An Evening with Steven Isserlis’ might be expected to focus on compositions close to his heart and so it proved. Works by Robert Schumann and Gabriel Fauré – “my best friends in music” – provided a packed Crucible Playhouse with works of deep anguish and passionate affirmation, played with rapturous devotion by Isserlis himself, a state readily transmitted to his younger associates, Mishka Rushdie Momen (piano) and Irène Duval (violin).
There were similarities between the pieces Isserlis had programmed – Schumann’s “Ghost” Variations was his last work, Fauré’s Piano Trio in D minor his penultimate one – but it was the differences that stood out. Isserlis’ own arrangement of the slow movement of Schumann’s Violin Concerto (entirely convincing in its piano trio guise) drew playing of inwardness and reflection from all three performers, before Rushdie Momen played the variations, based on a near-identical opening theme to that of the concerto movement, as though depicting the fateful loss of cohesion in Schumann’s anguished mind. The fifth, final variation (written after Schumann’s failed suicide attempt) emerged, under Rushdie Momen’s hands, as a poignant depiction of the fragility of Schumann’s psychological state, the melody slipping its moorings, the harmony wavering uncertainly.
Where Schumann’s last work left an echoing sadness, Fauré’s Piano Trio (written under its own sort of duress, given the composer’s debilitating deafness and physical exhaustion) emerged as radiantly vital, ending the concert in a mood close to ecstasy. One wouldn’t think it the work of a 78-year-old, such is its life-affirming quality. It is clearly a piece Isserlis loves dearly, evident from the moment he introduced the melancholy opening theme on the cello. But it was the slow movement that brought out the music’s spiritual depths, moving from Duval’s tenderly wistful handling of the initial violin melody via two urgent climaxes – the first unresolved, the second ushering in an exultant sense of joy – before arriving at the shared peace of its conclusion. After that the Allegro vivo finale brought the evening to a close in playful exuberance, the performers bound up in the music’s unalloyed delight.
The works in the first half were all composed within a decade in the turbulent years 1914-22. They were all, in their way, late works: literally in Debussy’s case, writing his final sonatas under the shadow of his fatal cancer; practically in Nadia Boulanger’s case, as she stopped composing after the death of her sister, Lili; and metaphorically in Ravel’s case, the stark language of his Sonata for Violin and Cello ushering in the music of his later years. The Ravel received an astonishing performance from Isserlis and Duval. Ravel himself described the musical language of the sonata as “stripped to the bone”, eschewing all harmonic comforts. In the first movement it was as if Ravel had instructed the players to talk across each other rather than in dialogue, but as the work unfolded, this most austere of musical combinations yielded greater and greater humanity in Isserlis and Duval’s hands, key themes in the piece revealing their inter-linked, passionate vitality.
The opening works on the programme offered a study in contrasts. Boulanger’s 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano are graceful, almost innocent. They were played with minimal fuss by Isserlis and Rushdie Momen. Debussy’s Cello Sonata in D minor – the closest the recital came to mainstream programming – is another thing entirely. Isserlis highlighted its Baroque austerity, its refusal to settle until its very concluding bars.