Steven Isserlis & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Biography Steven Isserlis & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Steven Isserlis
Acclaimed worldwide for his profound musicianship and technical mastery, British cellist Steven Isserlis enjoys a uniquely varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, author and broadcaster. He appears with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, and gives recitals in major musical centres. As a chamber musician he has curated concert series for prestigious venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s 92nd St Y, and the Salzburg Festival. Unusually, he also directs chamber orchestras from the cello in classical programmes.
He has a strong interest in historical performance, working with a number of period-instrument orchestras and giving recitals with harpsichord and fortepiano. A keen exponent of contemporary music, he has given premieres of Sir John Tavener’s The protecting veil, Thomas Adès’s Lieux retrouvés, three solo cello pieces by György Kurtág, and works by Heinz Holliger and Jörg Widmann.
Steven’s wide-ranging discography includes J S Bach’s complete solo cello suites (Gramophone’s Instrumental Album of the Year), Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, concertos by C P E Bach and Haydn, the Elgar and Walton concertos, and the Brahms double concerto with Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Since 1997 Steven has been Artistic Director of the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall. He enjoys playing for children, and has created three musical stories with the composer Anne Dudley. His two books for children, published by Faber & Faber, have been translated into many languages. His latest books are a commentary on Schumann’s Advice for Young Musicians, and a companion to the Bach suites, published to great acclaim in 2021. He has devised and written two evenings of words and music—one describing the last years of Robert Schumann, the other devoted to Marcel Proust and his salons. Steven has presented numerous radio programmes, including documentaries about two of his heroes: Robert Schumann and Harpo Marx.
Steven’s honours and awards include a CBE for services to music, the Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau, the Piatigorsky Prize and Maestro Foundation Genius Grant in the US, the Glashütte Award in Germany, the Gold Medal awarded by the Armenian Ministry of Culture, and the Wigmore Medal.
Steven plays the ‘Marquis de Corberon’ Stradivarius of 1726, on loan from the Royal Academy of Music.
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
makes old music new. Far from being an attempt to recreate the past, it instead uses historic information to create something that’s exciting now.
Founded in 1986, the orchestra’s name refers to the common term for the explosion of science, philosophy and culture in Western Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment. It was the time of Isaac Newton and Voltaire, and a quest for liberty. The period also found its voice in music as composers sought more freedom in the way they worked to promote their (often socially subversive) ideas.
In performance, the OAE is a collective that’s about collaboration between brilliant musicians. As the orchestra isn’t led by any one conductor, it gives players the artistic freedom to collectively take on that role. And they do so playing instruments and using techniques from the period in which the music was written. So if they’re performing Bach they do so on the instruments that would have been familiar to the conductor himself.
