Isaac Stern

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 20:12

Desert Island Discs

Speaker 20:31

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Speaker 20:36

Cast away on our desert island this week is the concert violinist Isaac Stern. Mr. Stern, could you endure prolonged solitude?

Speaker 20:44

With great difficulty.

Speaker 20:46

Apart from the loneliness and apart from being away from your family and friends, for you, what would be the worst thing about a desert island existence?

Isaac Stern0:54

Fear of monotony, I I should think.

Isaac Stern0:56

When this program was proposed,

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And choices had to be made.

Isaac Stern1:02

As you and the listeners will soon observe,

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They have been made with pain because they cannot be complete.

Isaac Stern1:10

What's the first one you've chosen?

Isaac Stern1:13

When I was asked to make this list, I had compiled it and then as I was coming to the studio I remembered.

Isaac Stern1:20

That as a very young man, one of the first great orchestras that connected with my inner ear.

Isaac Stern1:27

Via a record.

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was the Philadelphia Orchestra under the then young Leopold Stockovsky. And it was a recording particularly

Isaac Stern1:37

Of the Brahms Fourth Symphony.

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that I remember vividly almost to this day.

Isaac Stern1:42

It was the first time that this sweep of

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romantic style that became the landmark of that orchestra and that conductor became clear to me and I think to emphasize this we should hear a bit of the last movement and go into the extraordinarily fluid, wandering and yet so right flute solo by the great William Kinkade who was then in his prime as the first flutist of the orchestra.

Speaker 23:11

part of the last movement of the Brahms Fourth Symphony.

Speaker 23:14

Stockovsky conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Speaker 23:17

What's your second disc, mister Stern?

Isaac Stern3:20

A sound of a violin.

Isaac Stern3:23

A golden sound.

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and one of the great figures of connective artistic tissue between an era gone now but which taught us so much, the sound of Chrysler.

Isaac Stern3:37

And in this particular instance

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the kind of loving warmth

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together with another Titan of his time, Rachmaninoff.

Isaac Stern3:46

The opening of the Schubert Duo in A major.

Speaker 24:55

The opening of the Schubert Sonata No. five in A, Fritz Chrysler and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Speaker 25:02

You were born in Russia just. Went to.

Isaac Stern5:06

Well, I I sometimes say that I I owe a great deal of my musical background to my

Isaac Stern5:12

Early

Isaac Stern5:13

Period in Russia because I did not come to America until I was ten months old. Where did your parents settle in the United States? In San Francisco. Were your parents very musical?

Isaac Stern5:21

Oh yes. Music was a natural part of life.

Isaac Stern5:24

My father played the piano.

Isaac Stern5:26

Um, enthusiastically, if inaccurately.

Isaac Stern5:30

My mother was at one time

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A student at the um conservatory in St. Petersburg, which then was headed by Glazonov. But these were parts of general education. This had nothing to do with being musicians. It was

Isaac Stern5:45

to know what was beautiful in in in life and to enjoy it.

Speaker 25:48

Did you opt for the violin f first or

Isaac Stern5:51

Did you start piano?

Speaker 25:51

No, no, no, no.

Isaac Stern5:56

I was about six years old.

Isaac Stern5:58

About two years later a friend of mine, living across the street, was playing the violin.

Isaac Stern6:03

Because he was playing I wanted to play the violin.

Isaac Stern6:06

I've continued, he sells insurance.

Speaker 26:10

You were playing a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra when you were still, what, in short bands, eleven.

Isaac Stern6:15

That I think is a little bit exaggerated. I didn't I didn't play with an orchestra till I was fifteen. I wasn't soloist till till till then, you see. Yes. And the career began

Isaac Stern6:25

slowly and quite steadily.

Isaac Stern6:29

I I remember very clearly that my first season as a touring virtuoso consisted of seven concerts.

Isaac Stern6:37

And the next year there were fourteen concerts. And I dreamed of this great time when I would even give as many as forty concerts in the season. I'm now desperately trying to cut back to to a hundred.

Isaac Stern6:49

Yeah.

Speaker 26:49

When did you first play outside the United States?

Isaac Stern6:51

It was nineteen forty nine, the Lucerne Festival, the Mendelssohn Concerto, Charles Minsch conducting. Was that the same year you came to Britain for the first time? I came to Britain in the fall of that year. This was in the spring, in the summer. And I remember playing what was then called the Celebrity Series.

Speaker 27:03

Yeah.

Isaac Stern7:08

circuit that was handled by Harold Holt and I played

Isaac Stern7:12

Owen, Edinburgh, and Newcastle on the Tyne and Glasgow and I remember the grey trains and and and s and sort of various birds of unknown origin that one ate at that time.

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and grey hotels, railroad hotels,

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The apprenticeship

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that I find so important and so necessary.

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Even to day, when life is perhaps a little easier,

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And a lot less grimy.

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Let's have another record. What next?

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Another memory of the past.

Isaac Stern7:45

It's a very early recording by Helga Roswenge singing Floristan's Aria from Fidelio.

Speaker 47:56

Ouch.

Speaker 47:58

First dunk

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Nicht slai bertaushorn

Speaker 48:46

Oh shall I fall?

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Ah

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The present aria from Fidelio, Helga Rosebanger.

Speaker 28:56

You have been in Britain many times since that first visit. And you were one of the first American artists who would tour Russia after the war.

Isaac Stern9:03

Yes, in nineteen fifty six. Yes. A very interesting and a very exciting time.

Isaac Stern9:08

Do you speak Russian, fluently?

Isaac Stern9:10

I call it impudently because I speak it very freely and let the mistakes fall where they may, and I make plenty of them. But I get along very easily and in general colloquial conversation I'm not taken for an American.

Isaac Stern9:24

How many other languages do you have?

Isaac Stern9:26

I speak French better than I do Russian, I think, and I understand two or three other languages. But my wife really is the linguist in the family. She speaks and reads and writes in seven languages.

Speaker 29:37

It's uh pretty well how many miles do you fly a year?

Speaker 29:40

Oh

Isaac Stern9:44

Let me put it this way.

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In nineteen fifty nine

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On one airline that operates in the United States only, I was one of the first sixteen charter members of a million mile card.

Isaac Stern9:58

That's just in the United States, and that was nineteen fifty nine.

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This is wickedly tiring, isn't it? There is a a bit of jet fatigue.

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But it's also a place of refuge. No one can call you on the telephone. You're not being rushed to a rehearsal.

Isaac Stern10:13

No one is interviewing you.

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Or asking anything about you can read your book, you can sleep, you can relax.

Speaker 210:22

You can even think. Do you have any physical or mental system of relaxation that helps you to get through the vast amount of work that you have? Can you completely.

Isaac Stern10:30

Uh

Speaker 210:30

To

Isaac Stern10:31

Enough.

Speaker 210:32

Yeah.

Isaac Stern10:32

Oh yes, or if I get very tired I can

Isaac Stern10:34

Just stop everything and and take a catnap for fifteen or twenty minutes. Put your mental alarm clock on and you refresh yourself.

Speaker 210:40

What are your other interests outside music? Do you collect things? Do you

Isaac Stern10:44

I like paintings, I like sculpture.

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I read uh quite a good deal.

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From current events to thrillers, mhm, I find the thrillers very helpful on long flights.

Isaac Stern10:55

I like painting I like uh drawings particularly. I have

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A nice collection of those. Do you draw yourself? No. No, I have no pretensions to talents. I see too much of second rate talent in too many ways.

Isaac Stern11:09

Let's have your next piece of great musicianship, number four. Ah, this yes. In every violinist living today there must be one name and one sound in his ear.

Isaac Stern11:21

Because this is a name in history, that of Yasha Haifetz.

Isaac Stern11:25

As far as I am concerned.

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They write the history of the violin there, three names

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that will have to be there forever. They're Paganini, Ezai and Heifitz. And what is certainly one of the great performances on the violin is the Scottish fantasy of Bruch has played by Jascha Heifitz.

Speaker 212:40

The opening of the Brook, Scottish Fantasy, played by Heifitz with the New Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Speaker 212:48

What is your instrument, mister Stone?

Isaac Stern12:50

I have two Guarneri del Jesus. One is

Isaac Stern12:54

Uh seventeen thirty seven.

Isaac Stern12:57

Actually the real name is the Vicomte de Panette, sometimes mistakenly called the Allard.

Isaac Stern13:02

because it was owned by the great French violin maker Villaume.

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whose son in law was the famous French violinist Delfinala.

Isaac Stern13:12

and Allard played on it at times, and Villa, as a matter of fact, made a copy of that violin, which I also have.

Isaac Stern13:18

But because it was around Allard so much, although Allard used a most beautiful Stradivari, which is today in England and probably in my mind the greatest playing Stradivari in the world,

Isaac Stern13:29

Um

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He had this instrument around him and it picked up his name, but it really should be called the Vicomte de Panette. The other violin is the one that Isa used, and there is still a little ticket inside in his own handwriting in which he says, C'est guarnais de jejus, feu le fidel compagnon de macarrière.

Speaker 213:50

Do you always travel them both?

Isaac Stern13:52

Because, uh in the first place, uh they're they're two very, very great instruments and very near each other, so if something happens to one, the other is instantly available.

Isaac Stern14:01

And the second is that instruments get tired.

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even more often than their owners.

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And they're infinitely

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Less replaceable. Violinists come and go.

Isaac Stern14:14

But these violins, once they're gone, they'll never come back.

Speaker 214:17

Yeah.

Isaac Stern14:18

Yeah.

Speaker 214:18

What do you

Isaac Stern14:18

Yeah.

Speaker 214:18

Say your repertoire is exceptionally large.

Speaker 214:22

Depends from what point of view?

Speaker 214:24

There's one item in your repertoire we mustn't leave out. You're pretty good at Love in Bloom. I beg your pardon. That gorgeous duet you played with Jack Benny once that was

Isaac Stern14:32

Must you remind them

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I tell you frankly, how l how long can you can live on meat and potatoes alone?

Speaker 214:34

I'm fine.

Isaac Stern14:38

It gets boring after a while. And to to play these these singing melodies or these dance tunes or whatever the case may be, to let the violin be what it is unashamedly.

Isaac Stern14:50

A singing instrument that is the nearest thing to the human voice.

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To let it take part in the whole development of music from the folk music to the most esoteric music is a great, great pleasure.

Isaac Stern15:04

How much notice do you take of critics?

Isaac Stern15:06

Oh, very little.

Isaac Stern15:08

You know, um

Isaac Stern15:10

Well, I shouldn't really say this, but

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Or perhaps I should.

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First of all, critics cannot make a career or break a career. They can accelerate.

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or hinder it.

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But they cannot make it.

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On the whole,

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The criticism

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usually comes after the fact.

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The fact

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of an artist's life is not made up of one criticism,

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or one performance

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Or one

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Great passage or one missed passage. It is an accumulation of many years of effort.

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of ideas, of search.

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and in effect the concert stage, the concert hall,

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is a laboratory where he experiments openly.

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and where he tries from time to time, and if he's at all intelligent, changes from time to time.

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A critic

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Can be useful. He can also be.

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extremely irritating.

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Um but very few critics

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have the measure of knowledge.

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that the artist himself has.

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and even fewer of them

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Have the compassion.

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to sense what an artist is trying to do and place him

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Within a framework

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That is individually his, not in competition to someone else. No artist worth his rank today plays against anyone else but himself. Compassion is.

Speaker 216:41

It's a very good word in that context.

Speaker 216:44

Let's get on to another record. What should we have next?

Isaac Stern16:47

This is a record that I made.

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With friends

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In nineteen fifty one

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At the Casals Festival

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In Crad.

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It is the double viola quintet by Brahms in G major.

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Alexander Schneider, the second violin.

Isaac Stern17:09

Milton Cadem's Milton Thomas were the viola players and Paul Tortellier with the cellist.

Isaac Stern17:14

We had been rehearsing this work for performance and possible recording.

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And then Casalsphiliel.

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So all the concerts were postponed.

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And we all sat around this little village,

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rehearsing this and playing that and going for walks in the afternoon.

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having a bit at each other's house over the grand cafe that there was there at that time.

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And one night, very late it was a full moonlight night, I remember,

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We were sitting around the cafe we really didn't know what to do with ourselves, and we suddenly looked and said, Let's go up to the Abbey.

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and record.

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Let's record the quintet.

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And we got the engineer.

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who was there in residence?

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and up we went to the Abbey,

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and about midnight we sat down and began to make music.

Isaac Stern18:02

And this recording is the result.

Speaker 219:10

The Brahms Double Viola Quintet in G major.

Speaker 219:14

Recorded by friends at the Proud Festival. Let's go straight on to your next record.

Isaac Stern19:19

I would suggest then at least to hear a bit of um

Isaac Stern19:23

Of a mazurka. Let's pick a mazurka of Chopin, played by Arthur Rubinstein. All right, which one?

Speaker 219:24

Let's pick

Isaac Stern19:29

Um how about

Isaac Stern19:31

The number ten and B flat.

Speaker 220:31

Arthur Robinstein playing the Chopin Mazerke, number ten, in B flat.

Speaker 220:36

And we're going to go to the next one.

Isaac Stern20:37

I chose that Really because

Speaker 220:38

Uh

Isaac Stern20:39

mister Rubinstein is

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One of the living phenomena of our time

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That

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He has had such a long and illustrious career, is known to everybody.

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But to have the power that he possesses to this day

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uh as an octogenarian.

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who is unashamedly his age, and is as vital to day as most of us would hope to be at forty.

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and whose plane continues to mellow and to enlarge.

Isaac Stern21:11

is one of the glories of our time, and I don't think that any musician living to day

Speaker 221:13

Yeah.

Isaac Stern21:16

is untouched by what Rubinstein has done.

Speaker 221:18

He's a great man.

Speaker 221:20

Could you look after yourself on this island?

Speaker 221:22

In a practical sense? Are you good with that?

Isaac Stern21:24

Oh, I think so.

Isaac Stern21:25

Well, I I think I could if I had to, yes.

Isaac Stern21:28

I mean if could I fish and could I could you could I could I build a uh uh build a fire and uh pick a fruit and that sort of thing. I assume that these are supposed to be on the island. Yes.

Speaker 221:30

Should I build a

Speaker 221:34

Pietz

Speaker 221:35

Yeah.

Isaac Stern21:38

Hmm.

Isaac Stern21:40

Add fresh water.

Speaker 221:41

Yes, every Everything you'll need.

Isaac Stern21:42

But Yeah.

Speaker 221:43

Get to do it yourself, Island.

Isaac Stern21:46

Well, if you have to, you have to, otherwise you don't survive. Would you try to escape?

Isaac Stern21:51

If I had the slightest opportunity I certainly would.

Isaac Stern21:55

Very much so.

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Let's have record numbers.

Speaker 221:57

The

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Amongst my

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several public sins as that of being President of Carnegie Hall.

Isaac Stern22:08

uh which was saved from destruction.

Isaac Stern22:12

In nineteen sixty.

Speaker 222:13

You had a big hand in that efficiency

Isaac Stern22:14

I'm

Speaker 222:14

Uh

Isaac Stern22:15

I it started in my apartment, the committee that finally

Isaac Stern22:19

did all the work and and went through all the we went through all the political

Isaac Stern22:24

and financial machinery to to save the whole, and had it bought by the city of New York and

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It is run by the Carnegie Hall Corporation for the City of New York, and I am the President of that corporation.

Isaac Stern22:36

Not only is it the landmark for music in the United States, it is synonymous with um the United States as far as music is concerned.

Isaac Stern22:45

But there are certain moments, certain times.

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When all that effort

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And it was an enormous effort.

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proves so worthwhile.

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And one of those moments came when Vladimir Horovitch returned.

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After um

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A twelve year absence.

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and played.

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An absolutely incredible recital.

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And it is on a disc called

Isaac Stern23:12

Horowitz returns to Carnegie Hall.

Speaker 224:14

Horowitz at Carnegie Hall, May the 9th, 1965, playing part of the Scribeen Sonata No. 9 over 68. Now we come to your last record. What's that to be?

Isaac Stern24:24

Uh

Isaac Stern24:26

Now you make life very difficult for me.

Isaac Stern24:29

because it is almost impossible to choose.

Isaac Stern24:32

I have part of the list in front of me, some of the records here at the side.

Isaac Stern24:36

And I'm torn.

Isaac Stern24:39

I can tell the listeners that this is

Isaac Stern24:42

An impossible choice.

Isaac Stern24:45

You cannot limit yourself to eight records.

Speaker 224:48

You will have to make a snap decision when you leave for the island, without thought.

Speaker 224:53

and hope that you've chosen wisely and rightly.

Speaker 224:58

Now, to take one luxury to the island as well as your record.

Speaker 225:02

Right.

Isaac Stern25:03

I should think that the greatest Luxury

Isaac Stern25:06

Would be a refrigerator. We could have ice cubes and some cool air once in a while.

Speaker 225:10

All right. That will lay on.

Speaker 225:14

and one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.

Isaac Stern25:19

I think

Isaac Stern25:22

The Encyclopedia Britannica

Isaac Stern25:24

The pre-war edition, the twelfth edition before the nineteen fourteen war.

Isaac Stern25:29

It probably is the best of the Britannicas.

Isaac Stern25:33

and has enough to take up as many years

Isaac Stern25:37

as you would hope to be able to live on a desert island.

Isaac Stern25:40

Without bothering about

Speaker 225:40

About new developments. That's right.

Isaac Stern25:42

Uh

Speaker 225:43

Oh right.

Speaker 225:44

Thank you, Isaac Stern, for letting us hear your choice of Desert Island Discs.

Isaac Stern25:48

Thank you very much. Give me another week and I'll probably bring back another list completely.

Isaac Stern25:53

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 326:01

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.