By Inge Kjemtrup | From the November-December 2024 issue of Strings magazine
To hear Steven Isserlis tell it, the decision to perform Mendelssohn piano trios came from Jeremy Denk and his love for the C minor Trio. As to which trio member managed to get them into the recording studio in California, credit goes to Joshua Bell. The results can be found on Mendelssohn Piano Trios—the group’s second recording—released in October on Sony.
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When the three musicians and I meet via Zoom, they are in Georgia (the nation, not the US state), where they’ve been performing at the Tsinandali Festival. “I love going to chamber music festivals,” Bell says enthusiastically. “Much of my early concert life was going to festivals and being thrown together randomly with whoever’s around. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s where I met Steven for the first time, at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. That was a happy result of one of those random throw-togethers.
“But now, at this point, it’s really nice when you know that you’re going to be working with musicians that you gel with. And Jeremy and Steven are such for me. I’m having a great time.”
“Doesn’t look it at the moment, I must say,” Steven says skeptically, glancing at Bell. The violinist admits to being under the weather. The night before, he had played what Isserlis describes as an “outstanding” Wieniawski Violin Concerto No. 2 with “a high-class youth orchestra, playing with all the sort of energy and enthusiasm you’d hope for in a youth orchestra.”
Bell, Isserlis, and Denk have been playing together for a long time, as their easy banter makes clear. This year, they’ve been touring together for half the summer. This final festival appearance is special though. “It’s nice to have this continuity of playing together over the year a bunch of times and to remember how we play together. It’s an incredibly rewarding and gratifying thing,” remarks Denk.
How does this chumminess work in rehearsal and recording? How are disagreements handled? “We definitely argue things . . . ,” says Bell, jokingly interrupted by Isserlis.
“It’s bicker city. We bicker. Well, we enjoy bickering.”
Ignoring Isserlis, Bell continues, “When it’s three, it can often be two against one. Actually, I really think it’s mostly small things, but small things mean a lot. But the reason why I think we work is that for the bigger picture, we tend to have similar ideals.”
Isserlis adds, “We’re on the same wavelength. And it’s a real musical friendship, three ways.”
They were touring California in 2019 with both Mendelssohn trios—No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 (1839), and No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 (1845)—when they decided to spend two days recording them. Bell jokes, “We thought, why don’t we record them now so that five years from now we will release it?”
More seriously, Bell felt that the time was right to record. “We were alternating between the two trios on a tour, two of the greatest pieces for that ensemble. I’m in love with those trios. And, of course, the D minor, for me at least, I had done my whole life. The C minor was newer to me. I don’t quite understand why you don’t hear the C minor that often, because it’s no step down. I’m enjoying it even more than the D minor, which is already a perfect piece. It’s almost like you can get away with just playing it, and it’ll still be great. With the C minor, you have to delve deeper and think about it more for it to pay off. But boy, it’s goosebumps city for me.”
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Several years passed between when Mendelssohn decided to write a trio and when he actually completed the D minor. Given his reputation as a prodigal composer, what accounts for the delay? Was he feeling the ghosts of Mozart and Beethoven hanging over him or was the piano trio a particular challenge for him?
“I think the image of him as such a fluent composer is misleading,” says Isserlis. “Part of the reason why he’s underrated is that he struggled with a lot of pieces, and he was very insecure. He didn’t publish the B-flat major string quintet [Op. 87] or the ‘Italian’ Symphony in his lifetime because he didn’t think they were good enough, when they’re both absolute masterpieces.”
In liner notes to the new album, Isserlis writes that, “Mendelssohn’s output is steeped in the styles of previous eras, which he mastered with astonishing ease. And it is perhaps for that reason that his posthumous reputation has suffered at times: his fluency has been mistaken for facility, his charm for superficiality, his classicism for lack of originality.”
The new recording adds further insights into Mendelssohn’s compositional process with the addition of an early version of the D minor Trio’s second movement, Andante con moto tranquillo. It’s like listening to a rough draft of the finished work—fascinating yet missing something.
Isserlis persuaded his colleagues of the value of including the movement on the disc. Bell worried that “it might give the impression that we think the original version is somehow better, when in fact he really did improve it. The original version is historically very interesting. And it does demonstrate the fact that it didn’t just flow out of him, like the way we think about Mozart and it coming out fully formed.
“I’m glad we did it. It’s fascinating to see how he started and then it becomes less conventional as he revises it,” adds Bell.
How, I ask, do you bring freshness to the better-known trios, and what did you discover when recording them?“Oh, I remember we really had to rework the last movement with the C minor in the studio,” says Isserlis.
“Both last movements really evolved within the day,” Bell agrees. “Even though we had performed them and must have been happy enough to perform them. That’s one of the things about recording—because of the permanence of it, it forces you to think a little bit more clearly about how you want it. Because in a performance, if it’s not exactly right, it can feel improvised. And if it doesn’t really work, it’s okay; it’s a performance. But with a recording, at least for me, it makes me focus just a little bit more. And then I always feel like after the editing process, that’s when we should go into the studio and properly record, because you’ve had that many levels of rethinking and rethinking. And then I always feel after recording . . .”
“That’s the time you start all over again!” interjects Isserlis.
I foolishly ask if they listen to other recordings as they prepare. This provokes a speedy reaction. “You’ll look at the score and think about it,” says Isserlis. “When I’m teaching and I can tell people have been listening to recordings of pieces instead of looking at the score, I say, why talk to a vicar when you can talk to God?”
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Bell adds with a laugh, “Or you can tell they’ve been listening to recordings by the way that they play unlike any recording, because their sole purpose was to be unlike anybody else.”
“When you’re trying to be fresh, that’s just as bad as copying,” agrees Isserlis. “Just trying to be different for the sake of being different. And that’s not the way you should be approaching music, ever—just to be new. It has to be honest. And if you’re honest, I think you can never go wrong.”
“I also feel Mendelssohn has a kind of automatic freshness built in,” says Denk. “The music itself has this capacity for soaring and reinvention and a kind of electricity within it. It’s impossible to play it without searching for that Romantic feverish ferment or whatever you might call it. You can’t really write that down on a page. It’s all about imagination.” He adds, “The piano is often supplying a kind of electricity behind the lyrical lines of the strings.”
From his point of view as a violinist, Bell says, “It’s amazing to me how many notes there are on the piano [part] and that it doesn’t sound ridiculously busy. It’s a marvel to me that those continuously running notes don’t totally overwhelm. It’s just an incredible amount of notes.”
Denk expounds on the theme of piano-busy parts, “If you listen to the chamber music of Czerny, for example, you’re just like, oh god, do I really have to listen to all these piano arpeggios and scales?” Bell deadpans, “I do, every day, to go to sleep.” Isserlis, quick as ever: “That’s not actually true!”
It seemed an opportune moment to bring up the fact that Isserlis is a descendent of the Mendelssohn family. Isserlis lights up, jubilant: “Yessss! I’m so glad.”
Bell says, “Can you detect the eye roll through Zoom? I’m not sure if you can.”
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“You asked how decisions are made in rehearsal,” Isserlis says. “We’ve been playing lots of Mendelssohn, so I think the final word should go to the descendant of Mendelssohn. We’ve been playing Fauré. I think the final word should go to the person who named their son after Fauré. You know, it’s only fair. They’re begging me to say more about it, but that’s probably enough.”
The tone becomes more somber as we talk about the recording session. The producer on that recording, Adam Abeshouse, was recently diagnosed with a terminal illness. “It’s devastating for us to even think about it. It all came about in the last few months. It’s very, very sad.” Abeshouse has been the producer on a number of other recordings for the three performers.
Isserlis hails the experience of “working with a great producer who smooths the atmosphere, understands everything everybody’s saying. And we were very lucky to have Adam.”
“It’s true,” echoes Denk. “Also, it’s not a studio that was especially set up for classical recordings and had some quirks. His artistry was really behind the scenes. He was doing lots of things to make us sound good. Thank goodness.”
As to what the future holds for the trio after this hectic summer, Fauré’s chamber music is on the immediate horizon, with concerts scheduled for London and Santa Barbara.
“Fauré’s works get greater and greater as he gets older,” says Isserlis. “We’re all in love with the late works. In his lifetime, he was considered old fashioned. Actually, he is startlingly modern in his music. It still shocks us, some of the harmonies. What is that? A misprint? Then you understand, no, it’s not. He’s in his own world. He creates his own world.”
Fauré’s chamber music is less known by general listeners than is Mendelssohn’s, and, like Schumann’s, does not have the same instant appeal. There are reasons for that, says Isserlis. “I think I could go to a performance [of Mendelssohn’s music] with which I completely disagreed. Even if I didn’t think it was a good performance, I could still manage to enjoy it, which is not true of the Schumann trios. If they’re not understood, they sound like bad music. Mendelssohn, of course, should be played with love, but he, like a Beethoven symphony, can survive more easily.”
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