Forgotten Musical Luminaries by Thomas Wolf

Why are some musical luminaries remembered for generations, even centuries, while the names of others are forgotten less than a generation after their deaths?  This is the implicit question of a recent article in the September issue of Commentary by Terry Teachout, critic-at-large of The Wall Street Journal.  In it, he compares two musicians born at almost exactly the same time—conductor/composer, Leonard Bernstein and violinist, Isaac Stern.

Leonard Bernstein

Isaac Stern

His focus is on Isaac Stern who, he claims, is largely forgotten today (Bernstein’s star, of course, continues to burn brightly as the endless centenary celebrations of the recent past make clear). 

Teachout also compares Stern to two violinists—Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz—whose names, according to him, are well remembered even though they were musically active before Stern.

Setting aside the fact that I knew Isaac Stern and that my brother was his accompanist for a few years, I have no issue with Teachout’s contention that many people outside of classical music cognoscenti and violin lovers don’t recognize his name. 

Isaac Stern with accompanist at the time, my brother, Andrew Wolf

Jascha Heifetz

I do have some doubts about how familiar the names Kreisler and Heifetz are outside that same circle. As evidence, I recall an amusing incident that took place following some surgery when I had been surprised at the rapidity of my recuperation.  At a follow-up appointment, I said jokingly to my surgeon (whose wife was an amateur cellist, whose children took piano lessons, and who himself attended classical concerts), “You are the Heifetz of the surgery theatre.”

He looked at me blankly and asked, “Who is Heifetz?”

Even assuming that Teachout’s basic assertion is true and that Stern’s name is less familiar than the other three musicians, let us explore his explanations for why this is the case, despite the fact that Stern was one of the most famous classical musicians of his generation. Reason #1: Stern was involved in and best known for countless other activities besides playing the violin and this was a large part of why he was celebrated during his lifetime.  Those activities included “the coaching and encouragement of such protégés as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Yo-Yo Ma; his groundbreaking 1979 visit to Communist China, where he played with Chinese musicians who had had no contact with their Western counterparts since the Cultural Revolution; and, above all, the pivotal role that he played in saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker’s ball in 1960.”[1] It also included his unflagging support and efforts on behalf of the State of Israel. According to Stern in his autobiography, no less a conductor than George Szell “once told me that if I hadn’t spent so much time doing other things and had just practiced more, I could have been the greatest violinist in the world.”[2]

At the end of his career, Stern’s technical powers as a violinist started to diminish as his other activities increased.  The great joke among orchestra players during Stern’s later years was that they loved recording with him because there were so many technical slips in his playing that the recording session required many retakes and this led to overtime pay.  “Earn with Stern,” was the way they rather amusingly described it. But it is a rare violinist whose technique at 65 is as stellar as it was at 25.  You don’t have to save Carnegie Hall from the wrecking ball to see some erosion of technical prowess.  Today, for those interested, Stern’s legacy is captured in over 200 solo recordings as well as scores of others playing chamber music. Any problems encountered as he aged were taken care of through skillful editing and it is probably the rare listener who finds the latter recordings technically inferior.

Teachout’s second explanation for the lack of staying power for Stern’s legacy after his death has to do with his style of playing. It was beautiful, the author claims, but lacked individuality. Here he is, talking about Stern’s recordings:

Fabulously well-played and intelligently interpreted as they are, there is an ultimately enervating sameness to their sound, lacking as they are in the bold touches of idiosyncrasy that are the basis of a truly personal style. Heifetz’s “hot” high-pressure sound and unusually fast vibrato make his recorded playing instantly recognizable, as do Kreisler’s mellow, burnished tone and subtly varied rubato. Not so Stern, whose “centric” style was always impressive but never quite distinctive, certainly not in the same way that one can identify Heifetz or Kreisler after hearing only a bar or two of their playing. This surprising lack of individuality offers one powerful explanation of why he seems in memory more of a public figure than an artist.[3]

It is, of course, a bit dangerous to judge performers by their recordings.  It is not the same as the concert-hall experience or acoustic.   But that is not my fundamental problem with Teachout’s explanation which I believe is lacking in historical context.  There is no question that when one listens to recordings from earlier eras, one notes a great range of distinctive interpretations, sounds, and styles of playing.  Recordings by three great violinists—Efrem Zimbalist, Joseph Szigeti, and Jascha Heifetz—are quite different.  And, as Teachout implies, such differences are so marked that a knowledgeable listener can often identify the player.  Their personalities shine through.

But what he does not say is that during Isaac Stern’s generation, as the technology of recordings improved, there came increasingly to be a unified style of playing—technically perfect with much less “permission” to depart from the standard.  Listening to some of my grandmother, Lea Luboshutz’s recordings from 1909, I am amazed (and sometimes appalled) at the liberties she took, the way she used vibrato, and her unique sound. I am surprised too by the fact that she did not seem to care if a note was slightly out of tune if it added to the expressiveness of the phrase.  Nor was she alone.  Many musicians of that era cared less for technical perfection and more for expressive individuality.  Here is Efrem Zimbalist quoted on that very subject:

There seems no reason why modern violinists shouldn’t be able to play as well as the greats of my early years. But times have changed. Violinists today subscribe to a different propaganda. There is, for instance, a lack of delicacy in their playing. Tenderness, you know, is an important ingredient in one’s musical vocabulary . . . a beautiful phrase beautifully done is much more important to me than when the fingers fly . . . All the great players of my day had sufficient technique to give free rein to their individuality—and they all had something to say beyond just playing the notes. The times are wrong today for individuality; the world is too mechanical—and commercial.”[4]

Arturo Toscanini

As audiences increasingly educated their ears through beautifully engineered recordings that were technically perfect, a new standard came to be expected in the concert hall and it led to what I call an “international style” that today makes it much more difficult to distinguish a German violinist from a Russian one or from a French player though there were obvious differences well into the 20th century.  Today, in many respects, one great player (amazing as is his or her performance) sounds similar to another in a blind test. And what is true of individual performers is also true of orchestras—many had much more identifiable styles of playing and specific sonorities a hundred years ago (Philadelphia’s warm string sound, Chicago’s brass, for example).  And at one time, I could often identify orchestras in early recordings by listening to the woodwind playing (especially the oboe sound) or comparing extremes in tempo (Toscanini fast, Klemperer slow).

Otto Klemperer

More than fifty years ago, I was leaving a rehearsal at my Uncle Boris Goldovsky’s studio at Carnegie Hall and hopped in a cab which had a marvelous sound system—an unusual feature at the time.  I congratulated the driver who said to me, “A dollar off the fare if you can guess the composer, another dollar if you can tell me the piece, and a third dollar if you can tell me who is playing.” 

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I am a musician and I know that recording.”

“Prove it,” he laughed.

“That is Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony.”

My ride was three dollars less expensive but I doubt I could repeat the feat with more recent recordings.  Most good ones, while the playing is in many respects technically superior, tend toward a kind of similarity which, though amazing in many ways, can hardly be differentiated one from another.  Isaac Stern was one of the fine musicians of his generation, part of that first wave of the modern era performance. Great as he was, his playing was not as immediately recognizable as players from an earlier generation—nor was that of most of his contemporaries and certainly those who followed him.

Finally, there is a simple explanation for Isaac Stern’s growing obscurity compared to a Bernstein or a Kreisler.  How many dead composers can you name? Ten? Twenty? Thirty?  And some go back 300 years like Bach and Handel and Telemann.  Now how many performers can you name from that era or from 200 or even 100 years ago that weren’t also composers?  One or two? Composers, even those obscure during their lifetimes, often grow in stature after their deaths.  The very opposite is true of performers.

Comparing Bernstein and Kreisler, both of whom were composers, to Isaac Stern, who was not, is a bit like comparing famous playwrights of bygone times with famous contemporaneous actors.  Who were the famous actors of Shakespeare’s time?  I bet well over 95% or more of those who know Shakespeare’s name would be hard pressed to name one.

On one point I agree with Teachout.  He writes: “…in his chamber-music recordings, on which his colleagues similarly served as a source of inspiration, it is possible to appreciate in retrospect the considerable virtues of the handsome, unmannered playing that made Isaac Stern among the most beloved classical musicians of his generation.”[5]  There is no question in my mind that these recordings were among Stern’s greatest musical achievements.

[1] Terry Teachout, “The Binding of Isaac Stern,” Commentary, September, 2020.

[2] Isaac Stern and Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 1999, p. 156.

[3] Teachout, op. cit.

[4] Malan, Roy, Efrem Zimbalist: A Life, Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2004, p. 304.

[5] Teachout, op. cit.