STERN, ISAAC

STERN, ISAAC (1920–2001), U.S. violinist. Born in Kremenets, Ukraine, the following year he was taken to San Francisco, where his mother worked as pianist and teacher. He took up the violin at the age of eight. Following his recital début (1935) Stern was soloist with the San Francisco Orchestra under pierre monteux (1936). During the years 1943–4 he played for Allied troops. In America he acquired a reputation, which became worldwide after World War II. Stern made his European début in 1948 under Munch and thereafter he toured Europe regularly (except Germany, where he consistently refused to appear). His work with the cellist Pablo Casals at the Prades Festivals was important in his development. During the Cold War he toured the USSR. Stern had very strong ties with the State of Israel. He appeared frequently with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, most memorably in the concerts on Mount Scopus with Bernstein after the Six-Day War in 1967, and in the 1991 Gulf War, during which he continued his performance while sirens wailed to signal an Iraqi Scud missile attack. Stern founded the Jerusalem Music Center and became president of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and a sponsor of Israeli artists, such as perlman , zukerman , fried , and mintz . In keeping with his long-standing commitment to working with young musicians, Stern   held a number of chamber music workshops in Israel and at Carnegie Hall over the years. He was always active in chamber music with his piano partner Alexander Zakin and in a trio with istomin and rose (1961–1984); he performed regularly with emanuel ax , Jaime Laredo and Yo Yo Ma and yefim bronfman . For more than 60 years Stern appeared on the world's most prestigious concert stages. Recognized as one of the great violinists of his generation, he was particularly noted for his warm, rich tone in a repertoire that ranged from the Baroque to the modern. He premiered violin works by Bernstein, Penderecki, rochberg , Schuman, and Dutilleux and gave first American performances of works by Bartok and Hindemith. Stern is one of the most recorded musical artists of our time; he recorded all the great concertos, numerous chamber music recitals, and soundtracks for films (such as Fiddler on the Roof, 1971). He appeared frequently on television and documentaries. The film of his trip to China, From Mao to Mozart, received an Academy Award in 1981. Active in wider fields, he took part in the movement which saved Carnegie Hall in New York from demolition and became president of the Carnegie Hall Corporation. He was also a co-founder of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1964. Stern received many of the nation's and the world's highest honors, among them honors from the U.S., Japanese, Danish and French governments; the Albert Schweitzer Music Award for a life dedicated to music and devoted to humanity; a Fellow of Jerusalem (1986); Israel's Wolf Prize (1987); and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992). He received honorary degrees from many institutions, such as Columbia, Harvard, New York University, Oxford, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Juilliard School, and Tel Aviv University. His biography, with Chaim Potok, entitled My First 79 Years, was published in 1999. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grove Music Online; Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1997); H. Roth, Violin Virtuosos: From Paganini to the 21st Century (1997); A. Mischakoff Heiles, "Isaac Stern Remembered," in: The Instrumentalist, 56 (Nov. 2001), 72–77. (Uri (Erich) Toeplitz / Rohan Saxena and Naama Ramot (2nd ed.)