Showing results by author "David Schoenbaum" in All Categories

Despite dogged attempts by musicologists worldwide to find its source, the violin’s origins remain maddeningly elusive. The instrument surfaced from nowhere in particular, in a world that Columbus had only recently left behind and Shakespeare had yet to put on paper. By the end of the violin’s first century, people were just discovering its possibilities. But it was already the instrument of choice for some of the greatest music ever composed by the end of its second. By the dawn of its fifth, it was established on five continents as an icon of globalization, modernization, and social mobility, an A-list trophy, and a potential capital gain.

Wide-ranging yet intimate, The Lives of Isaac Stern is a portrait of an artist and statesman who began as an American dreamer and left a lasting inheritance to his art, profession, and the world.