Julius Isserlis

Russian pianist and composer, born 7 November 1888 in Kishinev (now Chisinau in Moldova), died 23 July 1968 in London. Grand-father of cellist Steven Isserlis, violinist Rachel Isserlis and violist Annette Isserlis. He studied composition with Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev and was awarded the gold medal of the Moscow Conservatoire at the age of sixteen. He then went to Paris in 1907 to study with Charles-Marie Widor and, on his return to Moscow in 1911, was appointed the only Jewish professor at the Imperial Philharmonic College in Moscow. In 1922 Lenin issued a decree allowing just twelve musicians to tour abroad for six months as ambassadors for the Soviet Union and Isserlis thus arrived in Vienna in 1923. He never returned to Russia. In 1938 he was offered his first tour of Britain, the very week that Hitler walked into Vienna, prompting him to stay in London, where he earned a living teaching, broadcasting for the BBC, giving recitals and touring Britain with the Wessex Philharmonic (precursor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra). He contracted Parkinson’s disease in 1963 and died five years later.