From the Jewish Library: ‘Isaac Stern’

 

Isaac Stern: My First 79 Years, written with Chaim Potok, Alfred Knopf Publisher, 1999

By Sheila Orysiek

SAN DIEGO — On any list of the outstanding violinists of the twentieth century, one would surely find the name of Isaac Stern.   Born in 1920, in the city of Kreminiecz, which, as he states in this autobiography, seemed to change ownership every two weeks between Russia and Poland.  He arrived during a Polish interlude.  Amidst the chaos of war and revolution, his father obtained a Polish passport and visa.  The family traveled east across Siberia and months later arrived  in San Francisco.  Stern was ten months old.

His father became a house painter and the family suffered from the usual problems of integrating into a new country as well as from the Depression.  The young son of one of the family’s friends began playing a violin and at eight years old, Stern decided he wanted to play the violin, too.  In trying to deflect their son’s growing interest because of the lack of capable teachers, his parents enrolled him in Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El, a large Reform synagogue in San Francisco.  His obvious talent with the violin came to the attention of the Temple’s cantor.

Connections were made and benefactors came forward to foster Stern’s need for a good musical education and violin lessons.  And so began an acclaimed international career spanning over six decades.

In any autobiography of  such a successful career, the story often reaches the point where it becomes almost a listing of the author’s accomplishments embellished with other stellar names and dates.  However, Stern does more than list – he gives the reader a sense of the frenetic pace of life and total commitment needed to keep such a career alive.  The difficulties of saying “no” to so many worthy causes and the need to share the gift of genius, well nigh over rode all other considerations.

But that pace takes its toll, both in physical health as well as family relationships.  Though he included his wife and three children on a number of his tours and there were family vacations, he realized how much of family life he had missed.

In addition, Stern poignantly describes as he enters his final decades the diminution of his physical abilities to play.  He sorrowfully realizes there are compositions he will never again be able to play, and how much it hurts to leave the stage and performing.  He has many other interests: teaching, coaching, advocating for projects dear to him and the ongoing consuming interest in saving and renovating Carnegie Hall.  But, its not quite enough.  He wants to play the violin.

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Orysiek is a freelance writer who specializes in arts and literature.  She may be contacted via  sheila.orysiek@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writers’s first and last name as well as his/her city and state of residence. (City and country for those outside the U.S.)