My First 79 Years (review)

My First 79 Years. By Isaac Stern. Written with Chaim Potok. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. [317 p. ISBN 0-679-45130-7. $27.50.]

Isaac Stern's prominence as America's unofficial elder statesman of classical music will ensure a significant degree of interest in his autobiographical reminiscences. Indeed, My First 79 Years is packed with fascinating stories, mostly from his travels as a famous soloist, including accounts of his pioneering tours of the Soviet Union and China.

At its best, My First 79 Years is an enjoyable, well-paced account of the career of one of the outstanding violinists of the twentieth century. The list of musicians who have played a role in Stern's life and consequently appear in this book reads like a who's who of great twentieth-century soloists, ranging from Pablo Casals, Alexander Schneider, Jascha Heifetz, and Gregor Piatigorsky, through David Oistrakh, Leonard Rose, Eugene Istomin, and Jean-Pierre Rampal, to Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Midori. The stories are never boring. The treatment of Stern's first thirty-six years (through chapter 13), which culminates in his tour of the Soviet Union in 1956--the first extensive tour there by an American violinist--is vigorous and convincing. It is touching to see Stern, born in Russia and brought by his parents to America at age ten, returning there. Though he is not completely fluent in Russian, his ability to speak the language, acquired thanks to his parents, made it possible for him to come into direct contact with Russians.

Stern and Chaim Potok retell the episodes in these memoirs in a casual, chatty tone that seems intended to capture something of Stern's speech rhythms. The writing, however, lacks the immediacy of personal revelation. Beyond the tribulations of the young Stern trying to decide whether to take the risk of setting out on the soloist's path, the reader is left with the impression of an icon rather than an individual. Stern's gift for direct communication, his wonderful personality--as both violinist and speaker--are flattened. When telling about his constant travels or the saving of Carnegie Hall from demolition, it is as if Stern has told the stories so often that he is no longer recounting personal experiences but repeating good stories in which he is coincidentally the hero.

My First 79 Years reveals Stern as deeply concerned about his public image. Unfortunately, because of his celebrity, unsubstantiated rumors have occasionally circulated among musicians regarding the violinist's private family life and his possible influence over the success of other musicians' careers. Stern shows himself unwilling or unable to distance himself from such rumors, giving them more credence through his overly defensive posture than they would have had were he to stay aloof and ignore them. His cursory dismissal of his frequent absence from home during his first child's first year--he was in Russia when she was born, and upon returning to New York, he left again almost immediately for two months in South America--is telling: "Vera, in New York with our newborn child, had known about the South America tour. It hadn't even been discussed by us; it raised no problems. Tours were arranged a year or more in advance, and I never canceled them; that was a given in our lives" (p. 132). If he seems to protest too much in this instance, his explanations for his controversial refusal to perform in Germany, on the other hand, gradually become persuasive on a personal level. In contrast, his openness in describing his own musical abilities is refreshing: "Both of us [Leonard Rose and Stern] had wonderful bow arms, and we knew how to use them" (p. 170).

Despite the reservations voiced in this review, My First 79 Years will not fail to delight Stern enthusiasts, and its coverage of the violinist's youth, which is not documented as profusely as his later career, proves invaluable. An added attraction is the large selection...