Concerto Budapest Presented by Liszt Academy

“My mother played piano, as did my oldest sister, although she wanted to play the viola; my middle sister and my father played violin, in other words, we lacked a cellist.” This is how in an interview Steven Isserlis dryly reflected on the obvious course of his choice of career and instrument. He went on to say: “Chamber music was our elementary school.” Known also for his music writing, the British instrumentalist appears in two concerts at the invitation of András Keller, first playing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor. One of the benchmark contemporary recordings of this concerto, written in 1872, also preserves an Isserlis solo. “One day I came home and was very sad; I said to myself: the master cannot live much longer; and suddenly the C-sharp minor Adagio came to me.” This is how Anton Bruckner remembered the birth of the most famous part of his Symphony No. 7; thus, the Adagio became associated with the impending death of his much-admired Wagner. Luckily for posterity, the opening number of this fascinating concert, Hymne au Saint-Sacrement, came to Messiaen’s mind not once but twice, because the work composed in 1932 was lost during World War II and the composer later reconstructed it from memory.