From the holocaust to Isaac Stern, we learn a great deal about a musician whose middle name is ‘curiosity’.

Israel in the 1950s feels like an incredibly musical place. What was it like to grow up then and there?

Well, where can I start? Most families, I think, were beginning a new life back then. Many had gone through the Holocaust. In my case my father was in Auschwitz, and survived, while my mother was in Łódź until the liquidation of the Ghetto at the end of ’42. She and four of her cousins ended up working in a factory in Berlin. She survived the war because she was a specialist in manicure and the Germans, and the Nazi’s particularly, wanted professional people – beauticians, dentists, heart specialists, musicians.

They had both been married before the war, but of course all the kids and spouses during Gestapo time went in the ovens. In my father’s family from out of eight kids only four survived, and on my mother’s side there were six children and only three survived. So, for my parents Israel was a kind of revival of humanity.

But to go back to your question, my father was a musician....