<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Steven Isserliss (L) – Kirill Gerstein (R) – A lunch hour’s worth of Russian Music.</figcaption></figure>



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Something I haven’t featured since I started Past Daily; one of the legendary Lunchtime Concerts from BBC Radio 3.

This one is a recital featuring cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Kirill Gerstein in an all Russian program – It was broadcast live on June 20, 2009.

In case you were wondering about the Lunchtime Concerts and how they initially started, I found this article which may shed some light:

During the early months of the Second World War, with concert halls, theatres and cinemas in London closed or blacked-out, Myra Hess came up with a remarkable initiative: to use the National Gallery, which had evacuated its paintings and stood largely empty, as a daytime recital venue. On 10 October 1939 she gave the first of what would become a daily (Monday–Friday) lunchtime series. The concerts ran uninterrupted during the Blitz and beyond, ultimately numbering 1,698 performances by April 1946, attended by over 800,000 people.

Hess’s motivations were both practical and moral: in a city under siege and cultural blackout, she believed that making high-quality classical music available at affordable cost in a central and accessible venue could boost morale and provide solace. The format was deliberately informal: lunchtime, no booking (just turn up), audiences could bring sandwiches, and the venue was the Gallery’s Room 36 (the octagonal, glass-roofed space) or, when necessary due to bomb damage, moved to a shelter room. The concerts gained legendary status for their discipline (“never closed”), high standard of musicianship and wide reach into London life.

The lasting influence of Hess’s series is clear: the idea of lunchtime recitals as accessible live-classical music became embedded in British musical culture. For example, other institutions copied the model (see e.g. Scottish National Gallery lunchtime series) and the format helped seed the post-war proliferation of lunchtime and hour-long concerts. National Galleries of Scotland

Meanwhile, in the post-war era and into the later 20th century, concert venues and broadcasting organisations began to establish regular lunchtime recital series, which in turn catered to wider audiences (including via radio). In the case of Wigmore Hall and BBC Radio 3, the Monday Lunchtime Concert series (broadcast live) represents a direct descendant in spirit of that wartime innovation. According to sources, the series was founded in 1998 by Adam Gatehouse (editor of live music at BBC Radio 3) and has become a flagship ‘live from Wigmore Hall’ broadcast. Though the Wigmore Hall BBC Lunchtime series is structurally different (weekly, broadcast, larger venue, part of a modern concert-season) the lineage of making high-quality chamber music accessible midday is evident: daily lunchtime concerts for a broad public, using a venue central to London, and (with Wigmore) bringing that music to radio listeners and a wider national/international audience.

Thus, the correlation is one of format and ethos: Myra Hess’s wartime series established the model of accessible, weekday midday live music in a central London venue, and the later Wigmore Hall/BBC lunchtime series carries forward that model into the broadcast era. There is not a simple institutional “handover” (i.e., the Gallery concerts did not morph directly into the Wigmore/BBC series) but rather a cultural genealogy: lunchtime recitals became a tradition, and broadcasters/venues such as BBC Radio 3 and Wigmore Hall inherited and adapted the idea. Indeed the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts listing notes “the Lunchtime Concert, one of Radio 3’s most popular and enduring features, celebrated 20 years of performance” in 1991-92. World Radio History

In summary, the connection is less a direct continuation and more a heritage of making classical music accessible in the midday slot, especially for people who might not attend evening concerts. Myra Hess’s Gallery concerts proved the viability and value of that idea in wartime; the Wigmore Hall/BBC Monday Lunchtime Concerts show how it has become a sustained part of British musical culture in peacetime.

And now a word or two about Steven Isserlis and Kirill Gerstein –

Steven John Isserlis CBE (born 19 December 1958) is an acclaimed British cellist, soloist, chamber musician, educator, writer and broadcaster, he is widely regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation.^[2][3][4][5] He is also noted for his diverse repertoire and distinctive sound which is partly from his use of gut strings.

Isserlis has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in 1993, the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau in 2000, and both the Wigmore Hall Medal and Glashütte Original Music Festival Award in 2017.^[8][9] His recordings have garnered two Gramophone Awards, a Classical BRIT Award, a BBC Music Magazine Award, and two Grammy Award nominations among others.^[10][11][12] He is also one of the only two living cellists inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame.^[13]

Isserlis currently plays on the 1726 Marquis de Corberon cello made by Antonio Stradivari on loan from the Royal Academy of Music.

Kirill Gerstein (Russian: Кирилл Герштейн) (born 23 October 1979) is a Russian-American concert pianist. He is the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gerstein is an American citizen based in Berlin. Between 2007-2017, he led piano classes at the Stuttgart Musik Hochschule. In 2018, he took up the post of Professor of Piano at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin in addition to the Kronberg Academy’s Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Artists.

Okay – over to Wigmore Hall.

The post Steven Isserlis – Kirill Gerstein – Wigmore Hall – 2009 – Past Daily Mid-Week Concert appeared first on Past Daily: A Sound Archive of News, History And Music.