Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern (Ukrainian: Исаак Стерн, Russian: Айзек Стерн; 21 July 1920, Kremenets - 22 September 2001) was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.

Biography

Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother before enrolling at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1928 where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study with Naoum Blinder for five years. He said he owed the most to Blinder. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: «They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa».

Within musical circles, Stern became renowned both for his recordings and for championing certain younger players. Among his discoveries were cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jian Wang, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. He also played a major role in saving New York City's Carnegie Hall from demolition in 1960, which later had its main auditorium named in his honor.

Among his many recordings, Stern recorded concertos by Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi and modern works by Barber, Bartók, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Rochberg, and Dutilleux. The Dutilleux concerto, entitled L'arbre des songes ['The Tree of Dreams'] was a 1985 commission by Stern himself. He also dubbed actors' violin-playing in several films, one of which was Fiddler on the Roof.

Stern served as musical advisor for the 1946 film, Humoresque, about a rising violin star and his patron, played respectively by John Garfield and Joan Crawford. In 1999, he actually appeared in the film Music of the Heart, along with Itzhak Perlman and several other famed violinists, with a youth orchestra led by Meryl Streep; the film was a true story of a gifted violin teacher in Harlem who eventually took her musicians to play a concert in Carnegie Hall.

In his autobiography written with Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years, he cites Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux as major influences on his style of playing.

He won Grammys for his work with Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose in their famous chamber music trio.

In 1979, seven years after Richard Nixon made the first official visit by a US President to the country, the People's Republic of China offered Stern and pianist David Golub an unprecedented invitation to tour the country. While there, he collaborated with the China Central Symphony Society (now China National Symphony) under the direction of conductor Li Delun. Their visit was filmed and resulted in the Oscar-winning documentary, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.

In 1987, Stern received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

He was also a good friend of Jack Benny; the latter described him as the closest friend he had in the musical world.

His November 1948 marriage to ballerina Nora Kaye ended in divorce in 1949. On August 17, 1951, Stern married Vera Lindenblit. They had three children together. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years of marriage. On January 23, 1997, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds, who survived him.

Isaac Stern died in New York City, New York on September 22, 2001 of congestive heart failure at 81.

In 2001, his estate decided to sell his entire collection of instruments, bows and musical ephemera through Tarisio Auctions. The May 2003 auction set a number of world records and was at the time the second highest grossing violin auction of all time, with total sales of over $3.3M.
Violins

Stern's favorite instrument was the Ysaÿe Guarneri del Gesù, one of the violins produced by the Cremonese luthier Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù.

Amongst other instruments, Stern played the 'Kruse-Vormbaum' Stradivarius (1728), the 'ex-Stern' Bergonzi (1733), the 'Stern-Alard' Guarneri del Gesù (1737), a Michele Angelo Bergonzi (1739-1757), the 'Arma Senkrah' Guadagnini (1750), a Giovanni Guadagnini (1754), a J. B. Vuillaume copy of the «Panette» Guarneri del Gesu of 1737 (c.1850), and the 'ex-Nicolas I' J.B. Vuillaume (1840). He also owned two contemporary instruments by Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

Awards

Sonning Award (1982; Denmark)
Wolf Prize
Kennedy Center Honors (1984)
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra) (1962, 1963, 1965, 1982)
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance (1971, 1992)
National Medal of Arts (1991)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992)
Polar Music Prize (2000; Sweden)