Norman Lebrecht: What we want to tackle this afternoon is the truly
thorny topic of writing about the nebulous. How on earth do you write about
music in a way that it can be made understandable and even tangible to
musicians and non-musicians alike? Conveying the matter of music is something
which defeats us all. It defeats composers. Composers put down an
approximation, a rough approximation of their idea, on to five lines on a sheet
of paper and it then falls to interpreters like Steven to try and tell us what
it was they really wanted to say, because the language of transition, the means
by which composers (you’re going to contradict this!) convey their ideas
are extremely approximate and what we then have to rely upon is the mediation
or the intermediation of an interpreter.
And it’s these things that
concerned me greatly when I was writing The Song of Names and I suspect concerned Steven rather differently
when he was writing When Beethoven Threw the Stew in which he was trying to do, as I’m sure many
of us have done, which is try to engage a new generation in the sheer vivacity
of the act of composition. Is that right? Do you want to –
Steven Isserlis: Yes, sort of. I mean, I was talking as I would
talk to a child, or an adult, the same thing really.
Norman
Lebrecht: Do you play differently for
children?
Steven Isserlis: No. Not at all. I just play shorter pieces.
That’s all. Although sometimes I wish I was playing shorter pieces for
adults. Yes, I mean I always like talking about music. But it doesn’t
replace, or it doesn’t even describe, music. It’s just for me, and
often in a concert I might introduce a difficult piece in which there could be
a visual image that could help the audience understand that piece better.
It’s a way into the piece. It’s not actually describing the piece.
But you know, it’s just something to hold onto while they listen.
Obviously, if words could properly describe a piece of music we wouldn’t
need music. As I say at the beginning of my book, words just can’t
express, what music can express in one note would take words several sentences.
On the other hand, I do like
talking about music. I like saying what I think the composer had in mind. I
mean if you listen to a piece like the ‘Pathétique’ symphony
by Tchaikovsky and you then read what he’s written about it, it helps.
It’s not that it describes it even, but it just helps you, it’s
interesting to listen to that and just to go Yes, of course that’s what
he had in his mind. And maybe make it quicker to be moved by the piece.
Steven Isserlis: What you’re talking about is magic, isn’t
it, and music is a sort of magic, which is exactly how I describe it. Rubato.
Yes, what I always say when I’m teaching is that rubato is like speech. I mean, as you can hear, at the
moment I’m going towards one main word in a sentence, coming away from it,
I’m taking longer on some syllables than others. That’s what one
does in music. Music is a language. And that’s basically what
you’re saying in that.
Norman Lebrecht: Yes. But the separation is more than a matter of
voice. The difference between you and YoYo Ma is more than just the tone,
which is very different. And the instruments that you use, which are very
different. And the mode of expression, which are very different. It’s
the personality.
Steven Isserlis: Yes, absolutely.
Norman Lebrecht: Now how do you express that personality when you are
playing exactly the same material? Not that I’ve heard YoYo do
Saint-Saëns.
Steven Isserlis: Ah! Well, yes, and of course we are both trying
to be slaves to the composers we are playing.
Norman Lebrecht: Is that healthy?
Steven Isserlis: Absolutely!
Norman Lebrecht: You’re not! You’re not! You are
absolutely not! You are mastering the composers that you’re playing.
You’re living a fiction of being their slaves.
Steven Isserlis: No. If we are masters of our instrument, then the
composers are mastering us, I think.
Norman Lebrecht: No!
Steven Isserlis: For me, technique is not having to think about it,
just listening to the piece, as the audience is listening to it and just, you
know, it coming out as it sounds to me that day.
Norman Lebrecht: You’re liberating the composer from the
inertness of notes.
Steven Isserlis: Well that’s words, isn’t it?
Semantics.
Norman Lebrecht: No. No. What are the notes without you to play
them?
Steven Isserlis: That’s true. What is the cello there
without me to play it? It’s true. Of course they will be silent on a
page.
Norman Lebrecht: Yes.
Steven Isserlis: Absolutely in that way. But what would I be
without the composer’s notes to play? I’d be nothing. Yes. Well,
again, the analogy for me is speech, it’s acting. We are playing the
same characters in our very different ways. We see them in very different
ways. We have different voices. We have a different range of emotions, range
of colours to play with that we want. We just imagine things in different ways
and that’s why it comes out as two actors playing Hamlet
would, as I said, be completely different although they’re saying the
same words. And it’s all to do with that what you’re talking
about, the timing and, ultimately, the magic. That music is a form of magic. We
don’t know why it expresses emotions the way it does. In fact, of
course, some composers, like Stravinsky. Stravinsky said music is too stupid to
express anything except itself. It’s his charming way of putting it.
Lovely man! But I know what he means, that music is itself.
Norman Lebrecht: But absolutely right. It’s too limited. It
is too limited. And then he went on and sought to further restrict its rate of
expression.
Steven Isserlis: Yes, I know. I mean we don’t know why music
releases all these emotions and basically, as a player, I found I can’t
even think about it very much. It just is. You know, some music is tragic and
makes you feel incredibly sad. Some music is happy and it’s a kind of
instinctive thing. I mean if I thought about why, of course minor keys tend to
be sadder than major keys, whatever. As a player you have to be, I think, and
some people think I’m wrong, I think you have to be very conscious of how
you express happiness in music, which is to do not, I mean of course it’s
to do with timing. It’s also to do with articulation. And when
I’m teaching, one example, I say, ‘How would you be able to tell
that somebody was not exactly expressing happiness if they say ‘My
mother-in-law is coming to stay today.’ And how would you be able to
tell if they said in exactly the same tone of voice, ‘My mother-in-law is
leaving tomorrow’. There’s a difference, and that’s
articulation. It’s all these things. It should be instinctive but also
you should know, you know, one’s reaction to music is instinctive, but
then, as a player, you want to know how you are expressing these different
emotions. And especially as a teacher, of course, you want to be able to pass
that on.
But in a way, I feel you
can’t touch music too much. It’s a plant that will shrivel if you
start talking about it too much. It’s like laughter. If you try and
analyse why something is funny, or beauty. If I look at a beautiful woman and I
can tell she’s beautiful and I can describe her eyes or whatever,
that’s great. But then if I go in her bone structure and then the blood,
then the beauty is lost. The same with laughter. The same with music, I
think.
You have to be careful to
preserve the magic, and the magic is what you are talking about there.
Norman Lebrecht: It seems to me to run against human nature.
Steven Isserlis: What does?
Norman Lebrecht: Well, we all long to pin the butterfly on the page.
Steven Isserlis: Well, that’s true. Some do.
Norman Lebrecht: We crave an understanding of what it is that moves us
and what it is that excites us. You can’t have music without people
wanting to know the why of it. Because it wouldn’t satisfy them.
Steven Isserlis: Really? Or is this first person?
Norman Lebrecht: It may well be. It may well be. But it’s
rather like talking about human anatomy. You can’t just look at it from
the skin outwards. If you did, we’d all be dead because medicine
wouldn’t have advanced.
Steven Isserlis: Yes, if you’re a doctor.
Norman Lebrecht: If you just said, ‘the human body is a
beautiful thing, isn’t it a wonderful thing? Let’s admire it.
Steven Isserlis: For me that’s fine! I have to say, I
don’t want to pin the butterfly. I want to be entranced by the
butterfly. I have to say.
Norman Lebrecht: No! You want to do the entrancing.
Steven Isserlis: No, I’m entranced by the butterfly as I
play.
Norman Lebrecht: Entranced first and then do the entrancing?
Steven Isserlis: Yes. I have to say. If I were a painter, I would
not paint a skeleton and the blood inside. I would paint the beauty of the
outside.
Norman Lebrecht: But if you were going to paint the beauty outside,
you would have to understand, you would have to have some knowledge about..
Steven Isserlis: I’d understand about how to depict the
beauty. But it’s not the same as understanding the skeleton and the
blood.
Norman Lebrecht: Mmm. I think it is. I think it is.
Steven Isserlis: That’s why you’re a writer and
I’m a cellist!
