The violinist Isaac Stern has been the primary exponent of the Russian school of violin playing in America. In recent years, he has become, as well as a devoted teacher, a tireless advocate of musical causes throughout the world.
Isaac Stern was born in Kremenets, in the Ukraine, on July 21, 1920. His family emigrated to America in 1921, a year after his birth. They settled in San Francisco, and at eight years of age, Stern was brought to Louis Persinger for violin lessons. Persinger was the concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony and taught Yehudi MENUHIN. He stayed only a short while with Persinger, however, and continued lessons from 1932 to 1937 with Persinger’s successor as concertmaster, Naoum Blinder, a violinist who had been trained in the Russian school of violin.
Stern made his orchestral debut at the age of 15, with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Pierre MONTEUX, playing Bach’s Double Violin Concerto with his teacher. A year later, he was the soloist in the same orchestra’s performance of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, broadcast nationally on the radio. His first New York recital came in 1939, and he was immediately signed by Columbia Artists. During World War II, he gave recitals for the Allied troops from the South Pacific to Iceland.
Stern played in Europe in 1948 at the Lucerne Festival, and at the CASALS Festival in Puerto Rico in 1950 and in 1953, where he formed a trio with pianist Eugene Istomin and cellist Leonard Rose. During the early days of the Soviet/American artists’ exchange, he toured the Soviet Union, where he played duets with David Oistrakh. Those who heard this concert were amazed at how well these violinists blended with each other. Trained on opposite sides of the globe, they were nevertheless from the same tradition.
In Israel, Stern not only gave concerts, but was also active in founding the Jerusalem Music Centre, which fostered the careers of violinists Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Schlomo Mintz, among others. In 1960, when New York’s Carnegie Hall was threatened with demolition, Stern led the crusade that ultimately saved and renovated the venerable concert hall. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson appointed him as advisory member of the new National Endowment for the Arts, and Stern performed at the White House on several occasions.
Among the composers whose works were premiered by Isaac Stern were George Rochberg, Krzysztof PENDERECKI, and Leonard BERNSTEIN. In 1981, the film From Mao to Mozart, which chronicled Stern’s tour of China, won the Academy Award for best full-length documentary. Stern’s playing can also be heard in the sound track of the film Tonight We Sing (1953), in which he played the legendary virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The film A Journey to Jerusalem (1967) records his performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Bernstein after the Six Days War, and he can also be heard in the motion picture version of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
Stern played violins made by the 18th-century Italian violin-maker, Guarneri “del Gesù,” one of which was Ysaye’s own instrument.
In the early 1990s, Stern sponsored music workshops for talented young players in New York that culminated in Carnegie Hall concerts.
More than 50 years of Isaac Stern’s performances have been documented on recordings. The most recent, in 1994, was of classical chamber music with the trio of Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO:
CHAMBER MUSIC; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Roth, Henry. Great Violinists in Performance
(Los Angeles, CA: Panjandrum Books, 1986);
Schwartz, Boris. Great Masters of the Violin
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Bartók: Sonatas for violin and pianoforte; Beethoven:
Piano trios; Berg: Violin Concerto;
Brahms: Violin Concerto.