A Vancouver Recital Society presentation. At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Sunday, April 17

Anyone who's ever taken a cello lesson will recall being instructed to plant their feet firmly on the floor, with the instrument gently held in place between their knees. Like any other aspiring cellist, the young Steven Isserlis must have received this drill, but it obviously didn't take.

Now a world-renowned virtuoso, the lanky musician with the shaggy poodle-style hair has developed a position all his own: feet occasionally hovering off the ground and tucked almost under the chair, cello propped on his knees.

Given the physicality with which Isserlis plays, this posture must allow him greater freedom of movement. In Sunday's recital with pianist and fellow Brit Stephen Hough, he was all crackling kinetic energy, tackling Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Josef Suk, Bohuslav Martin, and Johannes Brahms with characteristic zeal. His torso lurching this way and that, his arms gesturing at the end of phrases, and his face glowing with delight, Isserlis stormed through a concert of works as tempestuous as his playing.

In a lesser musician, this constant activity might seem affected. But Isserlis has nothing to prove: in both technique and musicality, he is as perfect a cellist as one could hope. His bow arm is the model of relaxed control, while his left hand effortlessly scales the breadth of the fingerboard. Playing a Stradivarius with gut strings, he achieves a warm, throaty tone. His interpretive instincts seem to flow from some deep, personal place where genuine emotions are channelled into a musical experience. Any physical restlessness on his part serves only to enhance his formidable charisma, and to draw the audience closer.

Two Brahms sonatas were featured: the moody, introspective No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38 just before intermission, and the exuberant No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 99 to close the program. Both are cherished standards of the cello-music canon, but Isserlis approached them with a freshness that uncovered new layers of meaning. The E Minor, in particular, took on a gentler, sweeter character, as Isserlis relaxed the music in both tempo and style. By easing up on the urgency with which the work is usually played, he brought out its lyricism and increased the intensity of its more furious passages.

For all the emotional turbulence on display, Isserlis always had a glint of humour in his playing. For his second encore-the first, "Angelic Song", was a lovely Gabriel Fauré- like composition by Hough-he let rip with a personal composition titled "Haunted House".

The piece turned out to be a comedic children's story peppered with sound effects from the cello and piano, and an inadvertent visual punch line of dust clouds rising from the latter when Hough banged it hard enough. It all culminated, hilariously, with the pianist draping a white kerchief over his head and impersonating a woman.

Whether or not this farce squared with the rest of the afternoon didn't matter-it was so ridiculously charming. Just like Isserlis himself.