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

[18] Isserlis went to the City of London School, which he left at the age of 14 to move to Scotland to study under the tutelage of Jane Cowan.

Ever since his youth Daniil Shafran has been his cello hero, of whom Isserlis has described how "his vibrato, his phrasing, his rhythm all belonged to a unique whole... he was incapable of playing one note insincerely; his music spoke from the soul.

He has performed Beethoven with fortepianist Robert Levin in Boston and London, and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Sir Simon Rattle.

He also commissioned a new completion of Prokofiev’s Cello Concertino from the Udmurt musicologist Vladimir Blok, which was premiered in 1997 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

[26] Isserlis has presented a number of festivals with long-term collaborators such as Joshua Bell, Stephen Hough, Mikhail Pletnev, András Schiff, Dénes Várjon, Olli Mustonen, Tabea Zimmermann, and actors Barry Humphries[27] and Simon Callow.

[28] He is artistic director of the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove in West Cornwall, where he both performs and teaches.

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

His most recent release of reVisions for BIS includes arrangements and reconstruction of works by Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev and Bloch.

[32] For Hyperion Records,[34] Isserlis has recorded Schumann's music for cello and piano (Dénes Várjon), and the complete solo cello suites by Bach, which has won many awards, including Listeners' Disc of the Year on BBC Radio 3's CD Review, Gramophone's Instrumental Disc of the Year,[35] and "Critic's Choice" at the 2008 Classical Brits.