Steven Isserlis: 1851

The Strad Issue: May 2026

Description: A master cellist offers an unusual concept album

Musicians: Steven Isserlis (cello) Connie Shih (piano) The Gesualdo Six

Works: Bach/Gounod: Ave Maria. David: Romanze. Moscheles: Cello Sonata. Schumann: Violin Sonata no.2; Sängers Trost (both arr.Isserlis)

Catalogue number: HYPERION CDA68477

Concept albums sometimes require a bit of pleading but Steven Isserlis does a lot of the heavy lifting in his informative and perceptive booklet essay. In it he draws together these pieces (mostly written or published in 1851) in a web of connections between and around the composers.

Central to his plan is the 1851 Érard piano played by Connie Shih – which may sound twangy to those wedded to the modern grand but, in the arrangement of Schumann’s Second Violin Sonata, goes some way towards allowing the cello to speak despite the downward shift in register.

What needs no amplifying is Isserlis’s well-known passion for Schumann or the connection between him and Shih (collaborators for over 30 years), effortlessly trading motifs and, in the first movement, creating a climax of palpable force.

The performance of the Moscheles Cello Sonata (dedicated to Schumann) is no less committed. It’s a substantial, virtuosic work, with its more appealing inner movements comprising a ‘danceable’ Scherzo – dispatched with lively but unforced jollity – and a Ballade ‘in the Bohemian manner’.

Here and in the shorter pieces by Ferdinand David (the dedicatee of Schumann’s sonata) and others, Isserlis’s effortless singing ability shines through. The choral halo in one of two versions of the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria is a delightful touch.

EDWARD BHESANIA