Nathan Milstein — violinist with roots in the Russian Empire
Nathan Mironovich Milstein was born in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, on 31 December 1903 (13 January 1904, New Style), one of seven children of a Jewish merchant family with no musical background; sources describe him as the third or the fourth child. A concert by the eleven-year-old Jascha Heifetz is said to have persuaded his parents to make a violinist of him.
From about the age of seven he studied in Odessa with Pyotr Stolyarsky, who also taught David Oistrakh, though Milstein later said that Stolyarsky never taught anything. He then went to Petrograd to study with Leopold Auer; Auer did not name him in his memoirs but mentioned two boys from Odessa who disappeared after he left the city in June 1917, and Milstein returned to Odessa when Auer went abroad. He made his debut in Odessa in 1920.
After the Revolution he lived through years of hardship, but found a supporter in Alexander Glazunov, whose concerto became one of his signature works. In 1921 he played a recital in Kiev, met Vladimir Horowitz and his sister Regina, and moved in with the Horowitz family, later saying that he had come for tea and stayed three years. He and Horowitz toured the Soviet Union together as "children of the revolution", in 1923 giving the first Soviet performance of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto, and he also formed a friendship with the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. In 1925 Milstein and Horowitz left on a concert tour of Western Europe and did not return. In Brussels in 1926 he was encouraged by Eugène Ysaÿe.
He emigrated to the United States in 1928. His recording of Mendelssohn's concerto with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic was the first item in Columbia's new long-playing catalogue, and his recordings of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin became a reference for later players; a later recording of them won a Grammy Award in 1975. After the Second World War he lived mainly in Paris and London, while continuing to tour.
He was made a member of the Légion d'honneur in 1968 and received Kennedy Center Honors in 1987. He died in London on 21 December 1992, aged eighty-eight.
"Left the Soviet Union in 1925 on a concert tour of Western Europe with Vladimir Horowitz and did not return; emigrated to the United States in 1928 and after the Second World War lived mainly in Paris and London."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Odessa, Kherson Governorate (now Odesa, Ukraine)
Born in Odessa in 1903, he studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky there and with Leopold Auer in Petrograd, and toured the Soviet Union with Vladimir Horowitz before both left for Western Europe in 1925.
.svg?width=900)
Odessa, Kherson Governorate (now Odesa, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.