When I was 23 years old I was fortunate to see the violinist Isaac Stern in concert. My husband, then my boyfriend, got us the tickets that were excellent, about six rows back from the stage. I remember watching as he created the most beautiful music. But the moment that touched my heart was when he meandered over the stage to our side of the theater, all the while making music, and as he reached a crescendo he lifted on to his toes…. I was sure he would lift into the sky with his music, upward into heaven. I thought, “this is what Marc Chagall was painting when he drew his musicians flying in the sky. This moment is a Chagall painting.”
I thought of Isaac Stern yesterday throughout a concert at the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Michael Stern, Isaac’s son. Although we have season tickets to the Pops Series of the Symphony, and we go to other concerts as well, we have never actually been to a concert that Michael Stern conducted. As I watched him conducting, putting his entire body into the music, I flashed back to that moment about 40 years ago when I saw his father.
Since that time when I was in graduate school, I have been to many concerts. I have attended concerts throughout the USA including the Aspen Music Festival, Boston Pops, Kansas City Symphony. I have been to La Scala, in Milan, where our hosts arranged for my son, my husband, and I to go behind the scenes at the music school [Accademia d’Arti e Mestieri dello Spettacolo (Academy for the Performing Arts]and see the incredible instruments and tour the school. I still cannot believe we got to do that!
Although I took piano lessons for many years, I was never the most talented musician. (See link below.) Those years of lessons, however, taught me to love music. I love to listen to the sounds of a symphony. I have sat in other venues and listened with my ears and my heart to other wonderful concerts and extremely talented musicians: including violinists Itzhak Perlman, Midori, and Pinchas Zukerman; and cellist Yo Yo Ma. I have seen Zubin Mehta conduct.
Not one of them have ever compared to Isaac Stern for me. Perhaps it was because it was my first time to see such an extraordinary musician. However, I think it was because of the way he lived and breathed his music. I will never forget him on his tiptoes, playing his violin and reaching to heaven with his music.
For me it is true, as this quote attributed to Plato says, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” For me, it was Isaac Stern who first truly gave me this gift. Seeing Isaac Stern in concert touched my heart.
https://zicharonot.com/2016/08/02/a-chair-a-baby-grand-piano-and-yiddish-songs/
zicharonot 
Lovely post. Your image is so vivid that not only can I see him, I can almost hear him!
Thank you.