„…Na całym świecie muzyka wzbogaca salę, z jednym wyjątkiem: Carnegie Hall poprawia muzykę…” – Isaac Stern.
“…Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music...” – Isaac Stern.
Gdzie mogłem spotkać Isaac Stern? Pytanie retoryczne, oczywiście w słynnej nowojorskiej Carnegie Hall, o której Stern napisał, że poprawia muzykę, gdzie byli również m.in. Itzhac Perlman, Zubin Mehta, których wcześniej fotografowałem.
Co ciekawe, zobaczyłem, że Stern pali cygaro. Pomyślałem sobie, to byłoby niesamowite zrobić Sterna z cygarem w ustach. Takiego portretu Stern definitywnie nie widziałem. Muszę powiedzieć, że nie było to łatwe, ale udało się. Po zdjęciach nawiązałem ze Stern korespondencję,
„…Kiedy w coś wierzysz, możesz przenosić góry…” – Isaac Stern.
“…When you believe in something, you can move mountains...” – Isaac Stern.
Muszę powiedzieć, że cygaro w ustach Stern przypomniało mi historię Yousufa Karsha, mojego mistrza portretu, którego poznałem i fotografowałem w Nowym Jorku pierwszy raz w lutym 1983 r. Opowiedział historię, jak do Kanady przyleciał Churchil 30 grudnia 1941 r.
„Mój portret Winstona Churchilla zmienił moje życie – wspomina Karsh. Już po zrobieniu wiedziałem, że to ważne zdjęcie, ale nie mogłem sobie wyobrazić, że stanie się jednym z najczęściej reprodukowanych zdjęć w historii fotografii. W 1941 roku Churchill odwiedził najpierw Waszyngton, a następnie Ottawę. Premier Mackenzie King zaprosił mnie do obecności. Po elektryzującym przemówieniu czekałem w Sali Marszałka, gdzie poprzedniego wieczoru ustawiłem światła i kamerę. Premier, ramię w ramię z Churchillem, a za nim jego świta, zaczął wprowadzać go do pokoju. Włączyłem reflektory; zaskoczony Churchill warknął: „Co to jest, co to?” Nikt nie miał odwagi wyjaśnić. Nieśmiało wystąpiłem naprzód i powiedziałem: „Proszę pana, mam nadzieję, że będę miał szczęście wykonać portret godny tej historycznej okazji”. Spojrzał na mnie i zapytał: „Dlaczego mi nie powiedziano?” Kiedy jego świta zaczęła się śmiać, dla mnie to prawie nie pomogło. Churchill zapalił nowe cygaro, zaciągnął się figlarnie, po czym wielkodusznie ustąpił. „Możesz wziąć jedno”. Cygaro Churchilla było zawsze obecne. Wyciągnęłam popielniczkę, ale nie chciał jej wyrzucić. Wróciłem do aparatu i upewniłem się, że technicznie wszystko jest w porządku. Czekałem; nadal energicznie gryzł cygaro. Czekałem. Potem podszedłem do niego i bez premedytacji, ale z szacunkiem powiedziałem: „Wybacz mi, proszę pana” i wyjąłem mu cygaro z ust. Kiedy wróciłem do aparatu, wyglądał tak agresywnie, że mógłby mnie pożreć. To właśnie w tym momencie zrobiłem zdjęcie.”
„…Muzyka jest jak kochanie się: albo wszystko, albo nic…” – Isaac Stern.
“…Music is like making love: either all or nothing...” – Isaac Stern.
Isaac Stern (ur. 21 lipca 1920 w Krzemieńcu, zm. 22 września 2001 w Nowym Jorku) – wirtuoz skrzypiec.
Urodził się w Krzemieńcu (dawne województwo wołyńskie w Polsce), lecz już w pierwszym roku życia syna jego rodzice przeprowadzili się do San Francisco, gdzie dorastał. Naukę gry na skrzypcach rozpoczął w wieku trzech lat, jego nauczycielem był Louis Persinger i Naoum Blinder. Pierwszy koncert dał w 1934. W czasie II wojny światowej grał dla aliantów. Po wojnie w dalszym ciągu koncertował, nagrywał, a także zajął się odkrywaniem młodych talentów, z których najsłynniejsi to Yo-Yo Ma, Jian Wang, Itzhak Perlman i Pinchas Zukerman. Powszechną popularność przyniosło mu wykonanie utworów w filmie Skrzypek na dachu. W 1999 wydał pamiętniki pt. My First 79 Years. Zmarł w 2001 wskutek niewydolności serca.
Odznaczenia i nagrody m.in.: Nagroda Grammy w kategorii Best Instrumental Soloist’s Performance (with orchestra) (1962, 1963, 1965, 1982); Nagroda Grammy w kategorii Best Chamber Music Performance (1971, 1992) Nagroda Fundacji Muzycznej Léonie Sonning (1982); Kennedy Center Honors (1984); Nagroda Wolfa (1987); National Medal of Arts (1991); Medal Wolności (1992); Order Wschodzącego Słońca klasy Złote Promienie ze Wstęgą (1997); Polar Music Prize (2000).
PORTRAIT with HISTORY Isaac Stern
Where could I meet Isaac Stern? A rhetorical question, of course in New York's famous Carnegie Hall, which Stern wrote about improving music, where there were also, among others, Itzhac Perlman, Zubin Mehta, whom I photographed before.
Interestingly, I saw Stern smoking a cigar. I thought to myself, it would be amazing to do Stern with a cigar in his mouth. I have definitely not seen a portrait of Stern like this. I must say it wasn't easy, but I did it. After the photos, I entered into correspondence with Stern,
I must say that the cigar in Stern's mouth reminded me of the story of Yousuf Karsh, my portrait master, whom I met and photographed in New York for the first time in February 1983. He told the story of how Churchill came to Canada on December 30, 1941.
“...My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life. I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography. In 1941, Churchill visited first Washington and then Ottawa. The Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, invited me to be present. After the electrifying speech, I waited in the Speaker’s Chamber where, the evening before, I had set up my lights and camera. The Prime Minister, arm-in-arm with Churchill and followed by his entourage, started to lead him into the room. I switched on my floodlights; a surprised Churchill growled, ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ No one had the courage to explain. I timorously stepped forward and said, ‘Sir, I hope I will be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion.’ He glanced at me and demanded, ‘Why was I not told?’ When his entourage began to laugh, this hardly helped matters for me. Churchill lit a fresh cigar, puffed at it with a mischievous air, and then magnanimously relented. ‘You may take one.’ Churchill’s cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, ‘Forgive me, sir,’ and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph...”
„…Granie koncertu z Zubinem to jak otaczanie się ukochaną jedwabną rękawiczką podszytą kaszmirem…” – Isaac Stern.
“…Playing a concerto with Zubin is like being surrounded by a well-loved, cashmere-lined silk glove...” – Isaac Stern.
Born in Poland, Stern moved to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and performing extensively in Israel, a country to which he had close ties since shortly after its founding.
Stern received extensive recognition for his work, including winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom and six Grammy Awards, and being named to the French Legion of Honour. The Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall bears his name, due to his role in saving the venue from demolition in the 1960s.
The son of Solomon and Clara Stern, Isaac Stern was born in Kremenets, Poland (now Ukraine), into a Jewish family. He was 14 months old when his family moved to San Francisco in 1921. Both his parents were musical, and his mother, who had studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, began teaching him the piano when he was six, before switching to the violin when he was eight. In 1928, Stern’s parents enrolled him at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study briefly in New York with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, the concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, 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 U.S. and Soviet Russia drew from the same city: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
During World War II, Stern was rejected from military service due to flat feet. He then joined the United Service Organizations and performed for US troops. During one such performance on Guadalcanal, a Japanese soldier, mesmerized by his playing, sneaked into the audience of US personnel listening to his performance before sneaking back out.
Stern toured the Soviet Union in 1951, the first American violinist to do so. In 1967, Stern stated his refusal to return to the USSR until the Soviet regime allowed artists to enter and leave the country freely. His only visit to Germany was in 1999, for a series of master classes, but he never performed publicly in Germany.
Stern was married three times. His first marriage, in 1948 to ballerina Nora Kaye, ended in divorce after 18 months, but the two of them remained friends. On August 17, 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit (1927–2015). They had three children together, including conductors Michael and David Stern and also Rabbi Shira Stern, one of the first female rabbis in the USA. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years. In 1996, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds. His third wife, his three children, and his five grandchildren survived him.
Stern died September 22, 2001, of heart failure in a Manhattan, New York, hospital after an extended stay.
In 1940, Stern began performing with Russian-born pianist Alexander Zakin, collaborating until 1977. Within musical circles, Stern became renowned both for his recordings and for championing certain younger players. Among his discoveries were cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jian Wang, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.
In the 1960s, he played a major role in saving New York City's Carnegie Hall from demolition, by organising the Citizens' Committee to Save Carnegie Hall. Following the purchase of Carnegie Hall by New York City, the Carnegie Hall Corporation was formed, and Stern was chosen as its first president, a title he held until his death. Carnegie Hall later named its main auditorium in his honor.
Among Stern's many recordings are concertos by Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi and modern works by Barber, Bartók, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Rochberg, and Dutilleux. The Dutilleux concerto, entitled L'arbre des songes ["The Tree of Dreams"] was a 1985 commission by Stern himself. He also dubbed actors' violin-playing in several films, such as Fiddler on the Roof.
Stern served as musical advisor for the 1946 film, Humoresque, about a rising violin star and his patron, played respectively by John Garfield and Joan Crawford. He was also the featured violin soloist on the soundtrack for the 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1999, he appeared in the film Music of the Heart, along with Itzhak Perlman and several other famed violinists, with a youth orchestra led by Meryl Streep (the film was based on the true story of a gifted violin teacher in Harlem who eventually took her musicians to play a concert in Carnegie Hall).
He won Grammys for his work with Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose in their famous chamber music trio in the 1960s and '70s, while also continuing his duo work with Alexander Zakin during this time. Stern recorded a series of piano quartets in the 1980s and 1990s with Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo and Yo-Yo Ma, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Fauré, winning another Grammy in 1992 for the Brahms quartets Opp. 25 and 26.
In 1979, seven years after Richard Nixon made the first official visit by a US president to the country, the People's Republic of China offered Stern and pianist David Golub an unprecedented invitation to tour the country. While there, he collaborated with the China Central Symphony Society (now China National Symphony) under the direction of conductor Li Delun. Their visit was filmed and resulted in the Oscar-winning documentary, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.
Stern maintained close ties with Israel. Stern began performing in the country in 1949. In 1973, he performed for wounded Israeli soldiers during the Yom Kippur War. During the 1991 Gulf War and Iraq's Scud missile attacks on Israel, he had been playing in the Jerusalem Theater. During his performance, an air raid siren sounded, causing the audience to panic. Stern then stepped onto the stage and began playing a movement of Bach. The audience then calmed down, donned gas masks, and sat throughout the rest of his performance. Stern was a supporter of several educational projects in Israel, among them the America-Israel Foundation and the Jerusalem Music Center.
Stern's favorite instrument was the Ysaÿe Guarnerius, one of the violins produced by the Cremonese luthier Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù. It had previously been played by the violin virtuoso and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.
Among other instruments, Stern played the "Kruse-Vormbaum" Stradivarius (1728), the "ex-Stern" Bergonzi (1733), the "Panette" Guarneri del Gesù (1737), a Michele Angelo Bergonzi (1739–1757), the "Arma Senkrah" Guadagnini (1750), a Giovanni Guadagnini (1754), a J. B. Vuillaume copy of the "Panette" Guarneri del Gesu of 1737 (c.1850), and the "ex-Nicolas I" J.B. Vuillaume (1840). He also owned two contemporary instruments by Samuel Zygmuntowicz and modern Italian Jago Peternella Violins.
In May 2003, Stern's collection of instruments, bows and musical ephemera was sold through Tarisio Auctions. The auction set a number of world records and was at the time the second highest grossing violin auction of all time, with total sales of over $3.3M.
Awards and commemoration: Sonning Award (1982; Denmark); Wolf Prize; Kennedy Center Honors (1984); Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra) (1962, 1963, 1965, 1982); Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance (1971, 1992); National Medal of Arts (1991); Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992); Elected to the American Philosophical Society (1995); Polar Music Prize (2000; Sweden); Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur (1990); Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1991); Carnegie Hall Midtown Manhattan, New York: main auditorium was named for Isaac Stern in 1997.
In 2012, a street in Tel Aviv was named for Stern.
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