YOUNG AMERICAN VIRTUOSO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 7

YOUNG AMERICAN VIRTUOSO

Celebrity Violinist Arrives Next Month

HE next overseas musical celebrity to visit New Zealand will be the American violinist Isaac Stern, who will give a short series of concerts under the auspices of the New Zealand Broad-

casting Service. Together with his regular accompanist, Alexander Zakin, Stern will arrive in Auckland from Australia (where he is at present touring for the Australian Broadcasting Commission) on September 15. He will play twice in Auckland, on September 16 and 18, twice in Wellington, September 20 and 22, and will be heard in Dunedin on September 24, and in Christchurch on September 25, after which he will leave by air for Los Angeles, Each of his con-

certs will be broadcast in whole or in part. Although as yet little known outside his own country, Stern has been acclaimed by critics there as an artist of no common ability. The English conductor Eugene Goossens also recently

expressed the opinion that he is in the first flight of concert violinists, and that technically and as an interpreter he can be mentioned in the same breath as Jascha Heifetz. At the age of 26, Stern has had an impressive ‘career. He was born in Russia, and was taken by his parents ‘to San Francisco when he was a year old. His earliest musical studies were on the piano, but his interest soon centred on the violin, and at the age of 11 he was able to make his local début. Guest appearances with orchestras in many parts of) America followed, and he studied further under Louis Persinger, teacher of Yehudi Menuhin. His New York début brought him to the attention of the leading critics and his Carnegie Hall concert in January, 1943, drew from them generous praise. He and Zakin presented the world premiere of the Hindemith

"Sonata-1939," at the Hindemith Festival in honour of the composer’s 50th birthday. | Alexander Zakin was born in Siberia. He studied the piano in Russia, and in Germany under Egon Petri, but his subsequent career was interrupted when he fled from Germany in 1933. For the next seven years he was a staff pianist. at Radio Luxemburg, but again had to leave quickly before the Germans marched in. He met Stern in America and they have been together ever since.