Isaac Stern - Biography

Biography

Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Krzemieniec, Poland. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother. In 1928, he enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."

Stern's November 1948 marriage to ballerina Nora Kaye ended in divorce in 1949. On August 17, 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit. They had three children together. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years. On January 23, 1997, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds, who survived him.

Stern died in New York City on September 22, 2001, of congestive heart failure, aged 81.