It's not often in life you get to climb the same mountain twice, separated by forty years, and then compare the results step by step.

Listening to the CD recorded especially for this book, you can do just that.

Arnold Steinhardt is the author of a new memoir, Violin Dreams. He also is first violinist in arguably the best string quartet in the world, the Guarneri.

Both the book and Steinhardt's music are thrilling, emotional, and evocative. What a joy that publisher Houghton Mifflin has seen fit to include a performance CD with the book so the words on paper can be enlivened by some of the music described.

Steinhardt discusses his own relationship with Johann Sebastian Bach throughout the book. On the CD you can hear his first recording of the D Minor Partita made 40 years ago, and the same piece recorded in March, this year, especially for this book.

"It is generally true that practice makes perfect, but recording Bach was no ordinary project," Steinhardt writes. "My rendition would be added to those made by an almost endless list of violinists. For such an ambitious undertaking I wished to play perfectly -- an ominously unrealistic goal. The nearer the recording date came, the worse I seemed to sound. The ghost of J. S. Bach had rattled me."

The first recording took place in the former grand ballroom of Manhattan's Great Northern Hotel. "In the middle of the empty ballroom stood a single music stand with a microphone hanging directly in front of it... if only I could play with the abandon of a Gypsy, the intellect of an architect, and the spirit of a dancer -- and then emerge with a conception that was truly my own rather than a hodgepodge of other people's ideas. The loudspeaker broke my reverie. 'Bach D Minor Partita. Take one.'

The session soon "ground to a halt" when Steinhardt realized the engineer was sitting in the booth intently reading the sports section of the New York Times. Steinhardt needed an audience. He arranged for the wife of a friend to sit in a chair at the back of the room, and the recording proceeded, the violinist playing his heart out to an audience of one.

Violin Dreams is full of tales like that. The marvelous anecdotes by themselves would make a book. But there is much more here. It's not so much the story of a life, as the story of how a particular musician came to embrace life and music. Steinhardt says, "The violin... opened my eyes, ears and heart to music, the violin... set me on a journey I am following still."

Anyone interested in Violin Dreams should also find Steinhardt's equally intriguing 1998 book about life with the Guarneri String Quartet, titled Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony.

Musicians I know who have read that book are amazed at how well Steinhardt conveys the experience of playing at the highest levels in a small ensemble, balancing personal feelings with those of one's fellow players, and finding ways to blend everything into a superb performance. The Guarneri has done this all over the world, night after night, year after year, for many decades.

Just for fun, a couple of anecdotes from the book.

"The trouble with Bach, however, was that people often had dramatically opposing notions about his music... The world-renowned harpsichordist, Wanda Landowska, once said to a fellow musician, 'Oh well, you play Bach your way. I'll play him HIS."

A story about violinist Ruggiero Ricci. "Before his concert began, Ricci announced from the stage that his wife wanted him to dispose of one of his violins. He told the audience that he would play the first before intermission, the second after, and let them decide which one to keep...

"When the concert finished and the applause died down, he stepped to the front of the stage and asked the audience which violin he should get rid of.

"Someone called out from the back, 'Get rid of your wife!'"

Aired Sunday November 5, 2006 at 10:55 am and Wednesday November 8, 2006 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Violin Dreams by Arnold Steinhardt. Houghton Mifflin hardcover with enclosed CD. $25.95. ISBN 0618368922.

Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Search of Harmony by Arnold Steinhardt. Farrar Straus Giroux paperback $15. ISBN 0374527008.

My 1998 review: http://www.gallerybookshop.com/bkm/bkm81126.html