Isaac Stern was among the most acclaimed classical musicians of the last century. To honor what would have been his 90th birthday, Sony Masterworks culled the archives for rarities previously unheard on CD.
The album title refers to the violinist’s prominent role in saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker’s ball. Although no one nowadays could imagine tearing down a landmark of that stature, the proposal was typical of the “urban renewal” mania of the 1950s and ’60s.
Oddly, the music on Keeping the DoorsOpen was not entirely recorded at Carnegie. Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor was given a dramatic rendition in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by the Israel Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein in 1967 concerts commemorating the just-ended Six-Day War.
The Mendelssohn piece is complemented by the melancholy yearning of one of the few things Stern ever recorded at Carnegie Hall, Tchaikovsky’s Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in A Minor. Stern performed the piece in the company of peers, pianist Vladimir Horowitz and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Keeping the DoorsOpen is a masterfully performed program of 19th-century Romanticism.
