A profile of the star cellist, The Independent, 2000

This January, the 38 year old British cellist Steven Isserlis played as part of a trio at the Wigmore Hall, before a knowledgeable audience. Barry Humphries, Simon Jenkins, John Tusa, and various heavyweight suits were there. The crowd were thrilled by brilliant music-making, especially in the Tchaikovsky trio in A Minor. The players - pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Joshua Bell as well as our man - showed artistic sensitivity, and masses of vigour. The afficienado all around were endorsing great performances, but even an ignoramus could judge the drama: the young men were highly engaged by each other. In Isserlis' case, the effect was enthralling: the toss of the head was poetic, the frown intense, the ecstasy palpable.

But what about the stardom that is within Isserlis' reach? By what personal and commercial chemistries does someone like Isserlis achieve lift-off? It will not, for a start, be by obvious off-stage charisma. Charming and thoughtful as he certainly is, Isserlis is no obvious Master of Cool. He has a sign on his cello case. "Rule Number One: I am never wrong. Rule Number Two, If I am wrong, see Rule Number 1." Behind the counter of a greasy spoon, or on a trainspotter's lapel badge, this would be unexceptionable nerdishness. At Isserlis' stratospheric cultural level - a vastly admired Proms performance of the Elgar concerto is but a sign of its success - this advertisement of prattishness does seem a bit weird. He also remarks that he's looking forward to seeing the Mr Bean movie and we seem to be locked into perma-adolescence.

It can't go very deep. A musician is a businessman, and must invest in himself. At Isserlis's stage, hovering between cult and celebrity status, his reputation needs careful management. In Steven's case this is supplied by his publicist, Ginny Macbeth, whose fees he mostly meets himself and which are on top of the upwards of 20 per cent his agent recieves. Column inches shift CDs and put bums on seats. Talking of seats: being a cellist, Isserlis has to buy two airline seats when he travels. The instrument sits in its case beside him wherever he goes. It is a gleaming incubus which is much more Isserlis' master than his servant. It is a very hungry beast.

He now often plays a 1740 cello by the Italian maker, Montagnana, which is mostly owned by a well-known ensemble player. Isserlis is now engaged on becoming the sole owner of the "new" cello, at a cost of #850,000. A trust of admirers lead by a merchant banker and a financial adviser is trying to raise the money as a loan.

I own 10 percent of it now", he says. Soon this son of a music teacher and a university metallurgist (whose own father was a celebrated Russian composer) will probably be stumping up the price of a small house each year ("my outgoings will double") in order to pay back the loan on the main tool of his trade. No wonder he travels second class on the train and can only yearn for business class travel in the air. "Now, oddly, I'm under greater financial pressure than ever. I understand for the first time how it is that successful businessmen become bankrupt." Somewhere here is the surprising heart of an artistic career: the degree to which it is an enterprise, a gamble.

The main immediate upshot of Isserlis' current and chronic expenditure will be that he has a cello with a bigger voice than his existing 1745 instrument by Guadagnini ("which is happiest if it's played gently"). This is necessary partly because increased fame brings bookings in bigger halls, and, according to one view, because Isserlis plays with animal gut strings, which make less noise than the more usual modern steel option. Isserlis' new cello can command every corner of the Albert Hall, from the rail against which the Promenaders press right up to the farthest Upper Tier, from which it can hardly be seen.

But the cello's appeal - even a quite loud one - is partly that it has audiences on the edge of their seats. Its perennial problem is to be heard over the orchestra. Its perpetual appeal is its understatement.

The cello, above all instruments, seems to speak with a quiet but passionate voice. As Isserlis says, the cello "surely is the most human of them all". And it is a mature voice: "A violin cuts through an orchestra more easily", he says, "like a child's voice in a crowd". The cello's is less insistent, though it contains a range which covers both the female and the male. It is a voice built for mournfulness or for at best nuanced gladness. "You play like an old man" said Paul Tortelier when Isserlis was a teenager. But what use would boisterous youthfulness be to an up and coming cello player? The cello is also civilised, emmollient even. But isn't lots of music like an argument, and sometimes a very heated one? "I suppose so", says Isserlis. And then adds: "I play a lot of chamber music, and that's more often like a conversation, a dialogue".

This is Isserlis the ideas man. One reason why Isserlis will probably become such a big figure is that he can tell as well as show. He is well-read and uses his knowledge in his sometimes quite tough discussions with conductors on matters of interpretation. One senses steel behind his judgements and his assertion of his right to them.

In his choice of the authentic gut Isserlis compounds his reputation as a purist. The music journalist Helen Wallace has described him as having a "thoroughly modern stringency". She was citing his being a stickler for technical accuracy, and his refusal to pander to the crowd. It feels of a piece with the prevalent accusation that modern musicians are dazzled by technique, but operate in an emotional vacuum.

"That's nonsense", he says. "The modern problem is hysteria, more like. People are inclined to think that bigger is better, and they pour intense emotion into every note. If an actor did that, he'd be laughed off the stage. The mistake with this is that there's nothing left for the emotional climaxes." That's what's so wrong, he thinks, with the "bleeding chunks" presentation of famous excerpts - there's no sense of the context of the "big" bits, none of the tension to which they are the catharsis, none of the quietude we deserve after the storm.

This is a very useful artistic snobbishness. It is just as well, however, that he is yummy to look at as well as severe and articulate. His musicianship needs to be markettable. And it is. He has a RCA recording contract and is famous enough to be on a "Most Unforgettable Cello Classics Ever" CD (a groaning board of "bleeding chunks" if ever there was one) which boasts Jacqueline Du Pre, Paul Tortelier, Pablo Casals, and Mstislav Rostropovich. There are very few famous cellists, Isserlis says, because there simply isn't room for many in the profession. "The repertoire is small. The cello didn't have the great nineteenth century performer who inspired commissions. In our time, Rostropovich inspired works which have effectively doubled the repertoire". Of the moderns, Isserlis has teamed up with John Tavener, with his religious works - or gorgeous ramblings - which are inspired by the Orthodox tradition and which achieved vast fame when one of them was sung at the funeral of Princess Diana. Tut-tut, I suggest, very crossover, very populist. A tad ersatz, even? Not a bit, says Isserlis. Justifiably popular, that's all.

Isserlis' talk leads one to think that he understands nicely the deal that has to be struck between showmanship and ordinary competence. "Many people have star quality who don't think they have", he says generously. "And the reverse is also true", he adds with hint of acerbity. He also acknowledges the degree to which sheer stamina separates the men from the boys. That and self-confidence.

But there needs to be particular character, too. One guesses that the strength of Isserlis' musicianship lies in the powerful tension he maintains between restraint, balance and intelligence, and emotion, expressiveness and even swank. He insists, anyway, that there is a false dichotomy between these parcels of idea. Isserlis was reviewing John Daverio's "Robert Schumann" when we met. He initiated and presented a filmed exploration into Schumann's late music for a rather precious Channel 4 documentary, to be screened at the Barbican next month in the second part of a festival devoted to the great Romantic.

He disparages too big a distinction between the emotional Romantics of the 19th century and the restrained classicists of the 18th century. "The classical composers may always have been wearing their fine clothes, so to speak, but that doesn't mean they cannot convey depth of feeling, or tragedy. When you come to the Romantics, Schumann, say, was incredibly hyper-sensitive. You can hear that in the music. But what makes it great is that he has the technical means to express himself. He was steeped in the classics and in literature."

It's an attractive call, agreeably elitist round the edges. "I would love to be the Fischer-Dieskau of the cello but I have no desire whatsoever to be the Pavarotti", Isserlis told another interviewer. This is saying that a discerning audience at the Wigmore Hall will remain preferable to stadia-loads of the star-struck. And he is proud that when he wondered if his career would ever take off, it was offers to play chamber music with his peers, and word of mouth in the business, that got him better work. He is proud of his partnership with the violinist Joshua Bell and his teaching at the virtually private International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall. These are of a piece with his modesty, and his insistence, less modestly, that it is the proper virtue. He says: "I tell my students, 'Don't do things to the music, let the music do things to you'".

Presumably this is the core of the musician's dilemma. He must assert himself within the music, but only in the service of the music and its composer. Isserlis says that great music has plenty of room for this operation, but also that any sensible artist can find satisfaction within that discipline.

This autumn, there will be a wonderful opportunity to test the theory. For the third time this year, Isserlis will be playing Elgar's cello concerto. He is said now to "own" the piece as truly as did Jaqueline Du Pre in her day. The piece is a wonderful test because it is so full of feeling, so muscular, so romantic and so restrained. In the hands of any player, it will transport people to the mists of a dawn in the Malverns in the evening of a man's life, for a discourse on aging which seems to have hope, regret and anger in it. Is it fanciful to say that in Isserlis' hands it can take people even further into solace?

And as he plays, is it wrong to enjoy those masses of bubbly ringlets, greying round the edges, as they tumble with every toss of the head? As he flings his bowing arm about, scowls at demons, smiles at fancies, his expressions make a musical score in themselves. The experience for the audience will be the essence of refinement, with a lovely dollop of showbizz to sweeten it.

Steven Isserlis is featured in a Channel 4 film, Schumann's Lost Romance, to be screened at the Barbican Cinema, October 4. Late September, RCA release Isserlis playing the Schumann cello concerto in A Minor, which he performs on October 3, 7.30pm in the Barbican Hall. On October 5, at 4pm in the Barbican Hall he plays Schumann chamber music with Thomas Zehetmair, violin; Daniel Phillips, violin; and Kim Kashkashian, viola; Robert Levin, piano.

On November 19, Steven Isserlis plays the Elgar cello concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall

Barbican enquiries, 0171 638 8891