Violinist?
September 3, 2025
My parents were Polish Jews. Mother came from a small shtetl named Dlugoshudlo northeast of Warsaw. I once asked her how far the town was from Warsaw. “Oh, it would take you a whole day to get there by horse.” “By horse, Mom?,” I asked incredulously.
“Well, how else would you get there?” she answered indignantly. Mother was born in 1906. She told me that the first automobile coming through Dlugoshudlo caused a sensation.
In searching for clues as to why Mother so loved music in adult life, I learned two things. Her Orthodox Jewish grandfather would often sing passionately in praise of God during mealtimes. Also, Mother would sneak into weddings as a child to hear the klezmer bands that she adored, only to be thrown out when it was discovered she was not a member of either wedding party.
Max, her father, having heard the streets in America were lined with gold, came to New York City before the First World War in hopes of earning enough money for his family to join him. Unfortunately, the war intervened and his wife, my mother’s mother, died during the 1918 influenza epidemic. In 1920 Max sent steamship tickets for Mother, 14 years old, and her sister, 8, to travel alone via Ellis Island to New York City The girls were fluent in Yiddish and Polish but spoke not a word of English.
My father, the youngest of eight children, was born in 1898 in Bendin, a small city in southwestern Poland. His father, a businessman without any musical training, would compose and then sing his melancholy songs around the house. Dad, who also had musical aptitude, remembered some of his father’s songs, one in particular that he passed on to my brother Victor and me.
To escape being drafted into the antisemitic Polish army, my father joined his brother’s jewelry business in Hamburg, Germany. Being in the country on a visitor’s visa, he was unable legally to become a partner in the business, something that literally saved his life. Almost all of Dad’s family were later murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz.
Instead, Dad traveled to New York City by way of Ellis Island in 1920, the same year my mother had. Sometime during the 1920s, my future mother and father met, and on their first date went to hear young Yehudi Menuhin, still wearing short pants, perform the Brahms and Beethoven violin concertos with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. My parents told me that people in the audience wept, so moved were they by the profound music-making coming out of this mere child.
Something about music, and especially the violin, must have registered deeply within them, for when Mother became pregnant with me, my parents made a point of going to orchestra concerts in which the violin was featured. Their hope was, I presume, that I would begin to fall in love with music and the violin while my fetus was growing in what might be called a concert hall in the womb. Mother liked to tell the story about my birth, at which time the attending nurse exclaimed, “Mrs. Steinhardt, your son has such large and useful looking hands. He could be a bricklayer when he grows up.” “No,” my mother responded firmly, “he’s going to be a violinist when he grows up.” Mother told the story lightheartedly, but it always made me somewhat uncomfortable. What if I didn’t want to be a violinist? And what if I really, really wanted to become a bricklayer?
An imaginary appointment with a psychiatrist, Dr. Feelgood:
Doctor Feelgood: Hello, Mr. Steinhardt. Before we begin, tell me about yourself.
Steinhardt: Well, Doctor Feelgood, I’m married with two kids, and I’m a professional musician.
D: Really. What instrument do you play?
S: The violin.
D: You must be an excellent violinist as a professional.
S: Well, quite good.
D: So tell me, Mr. Steinhardt, what brings you here?
S: Doctor, I’m experiencing an emotional crisis. You see, I never really wanted to be a violinist. I always wanted to be a bricklayer.
D: Then why didn’t you become a bricklayer?
S: Because my parents forced me to learn the violin, and unfortunately, I was good at it.
D: That’s all very interesting, but unfortunately.Mr. Steinhardt, I can be of no help to you in addressing your psychological problems.
S: And why is that?
D: Because I always wanted to be a violinist, and my parents forced me to become a doctor. Have a good day, sir.
Not to worry, dear readers. I never wanted to be a bricklayer. The first music I can recall listening to was the Beethoven Violin Concerto. I was five years old, and my parents had brought home a recording of the work, which I only much later realized was with Jascha Heifetz as violin soloist and Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The opening eighty-eight bars, played by the orchestra without soloist, felt primal—sometimes majestic, sometimes with a touch of sadness, but always deeply comforting to my young ears. And when the violin finally entered, it seemed to have the intimacy of a human voice, although one that expressed unnamable things I knew not of but nonetheless could somehow sense. When the first movement’s second theme appeared for the last time following the cadenza, I remember that its simplicity brought tears to my eyes.
As it turned out, my mother was right. The next year I started violin lessons.
Beethoven Violin Concerto – Heifetz with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1940)
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Comments
I thank your mother! And I thank you!
Maggie Wenig
Gosh, I love your stories.
Hello Arnold
Your mother, Pearl and your brother Victor, stayed with me in San Luis Obispo during the Mozart festival in the 1980’s. She was darling a wonderful human being, as was your brother. You did come over one Sunday afternoon and we met briefly. It was nice to hear more of the story. Blessings to you and your family! Jeff Eidelman
I, too, grew up with that Heifetz/Toscanini 78rpm jewel of an album in my family’s recording collection with the cover photo that was apropos on so many levels…
(although I did not listen to it until my teen years)
My family was very musical. My mother played piano and sang, my father played banjo and was a sculptor, my brother played sax and painted, I played trumpet and Bass Fiddle. I had a scholarship to the Aspen Musical School. I went into the furniture business and became a furniture buyer at Bloomingdale’s in NYC. I wanted to make money.
Wonderful story Arnold, as always.
When my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, she attended Cleveland Symphony performances, hoping to similarly influence the fetus. The conductor at that time was Nikolai Sokoloff. It worked…my mother even married a Sokoloff, Nikolai’s nephew.
Arnold, you did make the right career choice. But had you become a bricklayer, your products would be standing straight and tall forever!
Another great story ! I love learning how people got into music when very young. We all have stories, some difficult regarding family support. The more some, not my mother, thank heaven,protested, the more determined I became ! The passion for music is incredible…in your case, very beautiful. Your story made my day !
wonderful. I believe i also have that LP
I don’t know whether my comment posted. i wrote. Wonderful, as always. I believe I have the same LP too
So you are now confronted with this existential crisis? Funny I thought most musicians have this gnawing problem in their formative years? Ha, it was but a fleeting thought.
Beautifully written, Arnold—thanks for sharing!
Dear Arnold,
Your personal stories bring such joy to me. It’s as if you’re talking just to me. Also, it brings back fond memories of when you were talking just to me after a concert at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium when we had stage seats. What fun that was. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Madge
Dear Arnold,
I remember your telling a part of this story to Tom and me on one of your stays with us when the Guarnieri played at Stanford’s Dinklespiel auditorium. I grew up on 78rpm recordings like the Heifitz and I listened to the recording, with empathy for your young ears. What a glorious inspiration! My mother was enamored by Toscanini and had several albums, but probably not that one. She was partial to piano concertos. How I wish we had saved those wonderful recordings!
Warmest regards,
Jean
So nice to hear from you again! It’s been a little while, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy receiving your Sories in the key of Strawberry! I have moved once more to Canada in recent years, partly in reaction to the horrific events unfolding in the US. Just imagine if the current regime had been in place when your parents came to America. Herés hoping things turn around soon, and that you and yours stay safe and musically inspired through it all! Best, Kit
Beautiful story, Arnold! Glad you didn’t become a bricklayer!
xoxo
John
“expressed unnamable things I knew not of:” i want to express or learn to express, or experience, unnameable things i
do know of. when i heard you play Debussy quartet at the met,
i started to dream of sensations not expressible in words, as if words were clumsy, wrong tree, wrong medium…sandy
Dear Arnold,
What a wonderful story! (My great bass teacher was born in 1906..) My mother believed in
“Prenatal influence” & so she went to many concerts before I was born.. She loved music & told me that I stopped crying when she put classical recordings on the record player.,And of course
by listening to Beethoven/Heifetz first, you started at the top! Thanks for this lovely reminiscence.
Music is so great that when listening or practicing we can forget some of the “ difficulties” our world is experiencing now. I am retired now from the N.Y. Philharmonic, but I treasure the memories not only of playing with the Orchestra, but of my two years of ushering at Carnegie Hall.
during 1954-56, hearing such great musicians as Milstein & Oistrakh in recital, & many of that era. And the memory of playing with the Guarneri Quartet! With love, Orin
Orin
THANK YOU! Wonderful story, and that Heifetz recording is still at the top of my list.
Hello, Arnold,
Sorry, this is not a comment on a story you’ve published here, but on a true story (so far unpublished) we happen to share.
I grew up listening to Cleveland with you way up-front in the firsts. (My Dad was in the brass section for a while).
Not much later, i got to know your brother Victor out at UCLA, where i’d gone for college (just not in music, however).
There, Victor, a student violinist (name escapes me) and i performed the Brahms Horn Trio at a noon concert in Schoenberg Hall.
Both Victor and the violinist’s teacher were most helpful coaches in rehearsal.
I have more to relate, on a show of interest.
May you be well,
-derek
Thank god you became not a bricklayer – I never could have heard you in Munich Herkulessaal…! So often, and always just standing in the back – seats were to expensive at this time! Renate
As usual, Arnold, you have hit the ball out of the park, writing with your typical wit and warmth. I love hearing these old family stories. We are all so glad that you are not a bricklayer!!
A concert hall in the womb – a lovely concept! – that perhaps is not as fanciful as some might think.
I listened to the glorious Beethoven piece you attached, and I heard what you mean. Simple, but powerful solo passages can be as expressive as the human voice, much, as I recall, in Heifetz’s arrangements and performances of Gershwin’s Summertime and It Ain’t Necessarily So. To my ear, woodwinds, esp the clarinet, come close to achieving this effect.
I was older than you – aged ten, in 1959, — at the time of my first (and less sophisticated) musical epiphany. Cole Porter’s Night and Day in the Fred and Ginger classic, The Gay Divorcee, shown on Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV, Channel 9 in New York, revealed to me an orchestral, ie, non-doo-wop, landscape I’d been dimly aware of but paid little attention to. Over the next few years, expanded curiosity led me to Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, Art Tatum, Brubeck, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel and Satie.
As per the usual, your consultation with a medical professional raised – but did not settle – vast metaphysical conundrums (All those unlaid bricks!) one can only ponder in the years remaining. As the philosopher W. Allen observed, We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other, to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.
Dearest Arnold. The Marlboro Music Festival needs YOU and your magnificent violin virtuosity. I haven’t seen any bricks up on Potash Hill ??????
I grew up being inspired by your recordings, and now it’s happening through your stories. You coached my quartet in Albuquerque right before we went to the first Banff competition. Forever grateful for that. Both my parents were violinists, and when my mother was pregnant with me she performed the Bruch Concerto with the local orchestra where she was concertmaster. When I began to study the Bruch, I found that I already knew it. I am often in Santa Fe, so I hope to see you there one day.
What a wonderful set of memories! Thank you…it reminds me not only of the great Heifitz recording (it appears from the comments that everybody had that LP), but also brought to mind a dispute that took place one evening among the violinists attending the Santa Barbara Academy of the West in 1960….it seems some were NOT happy with Heifitz, declaring their firm preference for David Oistrakh’s recording…the argument became quite heated with many unpleasant shouted adjectives.
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