By HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Naming Isaac Stern Musician of the Year is almost an understatement. For this remarkable human being is more than a musician, and it is not in years but in decades that his services to his art and his community are to be measured. Master violinist, committed citizen, tireless advocate, cultural ambassador, savior of Carnegie Hall, friend and counselor to the young, he has left a mark on his world that few other musical performers can approach.

Even today, at sixty-five, an age that turns most men’s minds toward retirement, Stern’s thoughts and energies are focused on challenges ahead. During a recent interview at his Manhattan studio overlooking Central Park his conversation was of three pieces he was preparing to play for the first time and then to record for CBS—Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert for violin, piano, and wind instruments, and new violin concertos by Henri Dutilleux and Peter Maxwell Davies, both written for him, both world premieres.

“I could sit back and relax, reworking Bruch, Beethoven, Brahms and Mendelssohn,” says Stern, “but you don’t always look backwards. Every musician has to add on the new voices of our time. There are new concertos to play. And I still do rework the music I’ve played for many years. And I find enormous pleasure and stimulation fixing up and changing a little bit my performances of the Bruch and the Beethoven and the others. It really is enormous fun, seeing things in a new light."

Even the studio in which Stern, clad comfortably in blue jeans, a tan guayabera shirt and loafers, discourses on his plans, seems to symbolize his futuristic outlook. In the center of the huge room is the traditional concert grand piano with the violinist’s music stand alongside. But one long wall is given over entirely to an array of newly installed electronic equipment that seemingly could have come off starship Enterprise—turntables, tape decks, microphones, mixers, monitors, decoders, speakers. Stern works regularly with his own audio consultant, Lionel Rudko; and he also is in touch by intercom with his family headquarters, located seventeen stories up in another apartment in the same building. And then, of course, there’s the ever-present telephone, the instrument that, next to the violin, is most essential in Stern’s life. On this particular occasion, he was interrupted by an unexpected crisis call from Carnegie Hall, of which he is president. A storm had blown in some windows of a building under construction, and the police were about to close Fifty-seventh Street. With a concert scheduled that night, the hall authorities were in a dilemma and, as usual, Stern was called on to help resolve it.

It was Stern’s leadership of the fight to save Carnegie Hall from demolition twenty-five years ago that probably made most music-lovers aware that he was something even more than the leading American violinist of his time. Those who knew him well, however, had known long before of the deep sense of commitment and involvement that give him a unique place on the music scene.

Born in the Ukraine, brought to America as a ten-month-old infant, raised and educated in San Francisco, Stern attained stardom in his twenties, displaying a remarkable musical ability of seeming to communicate personally with each member of his audience.

But even as Stern was building his career as a virtuoso he gave new dimensions to the concept of the artist as a useful member of society. At home, aside from his aid to emerging young musicians, he played a role in interesting the government in cultural matters in general, and in launching the National Endowment for the Arts in particular. Abroad, he established relationships with the postwar generation of Soviet violinists, headed by David Oistrakh; he made an historic visit to China (commemorated in that excellent film From Mao to Mozart), and, closest to his heart, helped organize the musical life of the new State of Israel, fostering the careers of such young luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Shlomo Mintz. It was during a visit to Israel that Isaac met his wife Vera, who handles a good share of his business activities.

Stern probably never realized what a central place in his life Carnegie would play when he set out to prevent its scheduled demolition to make way for an office building in 1960. Some powerful interests—political, social, financial, and realty—were arrayed on the opposite side, and it took courage as well as conviction for a mere fiddler, no matter how eminent, to take them all on. Stern, in effect, mobilized the music world on behalf of the venerable edifice, persuading conductors, pianists, and singers, as well as other violinists, to join him in the campaign. Today Carnegie Hall is flourishing, undergoing a face-lifting and modernization, making preparations to celebrate its centennial in 1991, with a $50 million support campaign already at the $38 million mark. Even when Lincoln Center was being built, Stern never had any doubt that New York, the music capital of the country, could support two major concert halls.

Stern cheerfully acknowledges that in the last few years he has somewhat slowed the pace of his activities. “I don’t do summer playing anymore.” At his peak schedule he was playing nearly 200 concerts a year, a tremendous number; even today, it is difficult to spend much time in an important music center without sooner or later encountering a notice for an appearance by Isaac Stern.

And, of course, the recordings continue to come out in an unbroken flow. Stern has well over fifty listings in the 1985 Schwann Artist Issue; it’s conceivable that before he has finished he will have recorded more violin music than anybody else in history. The Stern violinistic catalogue is studded with names like Bartók, Bernstein, Hindemith, Penderecki, Rochberg, and Schuman, as well as just about the entire “standard” repertory.

Virtually all his recordings are for CBS, which last year designated him its first Artist Laureate. Among other forthcoming releases, CBS is bringing out a “retrospective album” devoted to his past recordings—including Stern’s first orchestral recording, of the Wieniawski D minor Concerto, made forty years ago with Efrem Kurtz and the New York Philharmonic. “We did the whole thing in forty minutes,” recalls Stern with a smile. “No splicing, no tape. In those days, whatever happened, happened.”

In the years since, Isaac Stern has gone from letting it happen to making it happen. And he has done so in such a way that the entire music world is in his debt.