Isaac Stern On His 1956 Tour of the Soviet Union

On May 3, 1956, the 35-year-old violinist Isaac Stern became the first American concert artist to perform in Moscow's Grand Conservatory Hall in ten years. Despite the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States is firmly underway, Stern was hailed through five encores and warmly embraced by Russia's leading violinist David Oistrakh.

The Moscow performances, accompanied by Alexander Zakin on piano, were the start of a month-long tour that would take the violin virtuoso to Leningrad, Kyiv, Baku, Tiflis, and Erivan before his finishing-up back in Moscow. 

It is worth noting that this tour was undertaken two years before Van Cliburn's winning performance at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, often cited as an example of music's power to bring about reconciliation and as the beginning of a cultural thaw between the two superpowers. 

In his interview with WQXR Music Director Abram Chasins, Stern reflects on the warmth of the Russian people in the streets and their desire to know more about the world at a time when trustworthy information was the leading casualty of the Cold War. His take was based on his experiences in those six Soviet cities: The amazing number of orchestras to be found in the Soviet Union; the high standards of performance at their conservatories; their broad knowledge of the classical repertoire; the shockingly poor conditions of rare violins and other instruments; the sizable state support for artists and musicians; and the significant number of music students eager to learn and of audiences, eager to listen.