If the career becomes more important than the music…. it empties your soul he says.

The international cellist takes on the thorny issue of artists who cannot go on stage without chemical assistance. ‘I never took drugs,’ he says, ‘perhaps because I knew someone who died of them.’

He discusses brutal teachers, including Sandor Vegh who emptied a beer jug on his head.

Steven believes music should be approached as both religion and science. ‘You are serving a higher force,’ he reflects.

But, he adds, ‘Beethoven always makes me laugh. There’s a lot of humour in most great music.’

Steven is totally himself as the latest subject in Zsolt Bognar’s Living the Classical Life.