Great fiddler. With Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh (for entirely opposite reasons), one of my favorite.
I have this annecdote. In 1979, when Communist China was starting to open up to the West, Stern starred in a documentary that made a great splash back then, From Mao To Mozart: Isaac Stern in China (link will open new tab to Wikipedia’s entry).
In the film, there’s a scene (correct me if I’m wrong, I’m speaking here from a memory of over four decades, and maybe not even my own memory – I’m not sure I even saw the fim – but the memory of reading about it) where Stern observes with awe a Chinese gymnast doing a triple back summersault or something like it. And Stern comments: “Yes. Well, on the other hand, however hard he trains, he will never play Mozart properly”.
HELL NO! The comment says tons about the prejudices still in vogue in the late 1970s about Asians and Classical music. They could be (went the prejudice) great virtuosos but had no sense of style. But the truth is, had the gymnast put his body and mind to it, in 20 years he would have played Mozart with style. On the other hand, whatever amount of mind and body and time Stern would put to it, he would never have mastered even a simple back summersault.
(As I write in August 2026, the movie is on YouTube and I’ve found the spot: the scene starts at 43:47. My imagination had changed it a bit – but the conclusion still holds!).
Not that I want to chide the memory of Isaac Stern. His impact and heritage as one of the greatest violinists of the second half of the 20th Century far surpasses what it would have been had he been a virtuoso gymnast!
Sony did a great service to Stern and the music lovers with their comprehensive series, “The Isaac Stern Collection” (1990) and “Isaac Stern A Life In Music” (31 volumes, 1995-96).
Here are links to a few of my reviews of his recordings.
A Life In Music vol. 27: Sonatas of César Franck, Claude Debussy, Georges Enesco. Alexander Zakin, piano.Sony SMK 64 532 (1996)
A Life In Music vol. 28: Paul Hindemith: Sonata for Violin and Piano, Ernest Bloch: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Baal Shem, Aaron Copland: Sonata for Violin and Piano. Alexander Zakin, Aaron Copland (in Copland), piano. Sony SMK 64 533 (1996)
The Isaac Stern Collection – Early Concerto Recordings vol 2: Concertos of Lalo, Bruch, Sarasate, Sibelius, Bernstein, Saint-Saëns, Prokofiev, Wieniawski, 1946-1958. Sony SM3K 45956 (1990) barcode 074644595628 or 5099704595627 (link will open new tab to my review on Amazon.com pending repost).