By HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Perhaps the only surprising thing about violinist Nathan Milstein’s designation as Musician of the Year is that it hasn’t happened before. For more than half a century—his U.S. debut was in October 1929—this quiet, unassuming, totally dedicated musician has played the violin with a rare blend of technical mastery, tonal beauty, and artistic conviction. With such imposing figures as Kreisler, Elman, and Heifetz either departed or silent, Milstein remains the last of an elegant, eloquent generation.

He himself scoffs at attempts to identify him as the sole survivor of a vanished style of violin playing. “Old school, new school, what does that mean?’’ he says with his characteristic directness. “To try to play well—that is the whole school.”

Wherever he goes, whatever he does, Nathan Milstein plays well. At a typical Carnegie Hall concert such fellow practitioners as Itzhak Perlman and Joseph Fuchs will be seated in the hall, while the balcony will be filled with young violin students, many of them toting their cases. When he performs a concerto, the violinists in the orchestra will watch him and listen with greater than normal intentness, and sometimes even seem to outdo themselves in their own performance, as if in response. “When Milstein plays,” someone once remarked, “it’s like a fiddlers’ convention out there in the hall.”

In his personal appearance, as well as in his musical style, Milstein hasn’t changed much over the years. His once dark-brown hair has turned gray, but on the stage he still is the same trim, medium-sized, business-like figure, playing his instrument with supreme musicianship and with a minimum of fuss and flourish. His repertoire encompasses all the standard concertos and sonatas, although the music to which he feels closest spiritual kinship is, on the one hand, that of Bach, and on the other, that of the nineteenth-century romantic composers, particularly those with a special affinity for the violin. His “signature” piece, if he can be said to have one, is the Glazunov A minor Concerto, which he first played at the age of ten under Glazunov himself.

Milstein was born on New Year’s Eve of 1904 in Odessa, Russia, a city which has produced a line of celebrated fiddlers stretching from Toscha Seidel to David Oistrakh. He began studying the violin at the age of five only, so he says, at the insistence of his mother, explaining: “At that time, children did what their mothers wanted.” Later on he went to St. Petersburg to study with Leopold Auer, whose previous pupils had included Elman, Heifetz, and Efrem Zimbalist—another indication that Milstein, all protestations to the contrary, does share in a specific violinistic tradition.

While Milstein has been the recipient of critical praise from the outset of his career in this country, many observers have detected a gradual artistic deepening over the years. His first impact on this country was as a dazzling technician, but over the years reviewers began to comment more and more on his extraordinary interpretive qualities.

Milstein finds growth and maturity are not exactly the hallmark of today’s crop of fiddlers. “There’s no reason to think that people are less talented today than they were a hundred years ago,” he has said. “But now there is so much opportunity for success for young violinists that they get overwhelmed. It’s a little dangerous. They become so facile that they have no time to deepen themselves. Success should not spoil a performer, it should encourage him. It’s much easier to get started today than it is to make a career. When I came to America there were about fifteen orchestras in the country. Now there are two hundred, and they’re all looking for soloists. You appear on television and everybody knows you. “Violinists must have time to develop gradually. Sixty or seventy years ago there were steps you had to take—Berlin, Vienna, the Leipzig Gewandhaus. You had to make a success, like Heifetz with Nikisch. You couldn’t succeed just because you were on television.”

In 1942, Milstein became a U.S. citizen after some years of residence in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Originally he had departed from Soviet Russia traveling on a Nansen passport, a League of Nations certificate which left his citizenship uncertain. For some years now he has resided with his wife of nearly forty years, the former Thérèse Kauffman, in London, where their married daughter Maria Bernadette lives.

No one expects Nathan Milstein to lay aside his bow in the years ahead. By his own admission, he has never gotten tired of playing the violin, nor does he expect to do so now. “Things have changed,” he acknowledges. “Even food has changed, so why shouldn’t violinists? But one thing hasn’t changed, and that is audiences—they have always liked good playing. There will always be good violinists, and not-so-good violinists, and bad violinists. Whom do I like among today’s violinists? I will tell you: I admire everybody who has talent and plays well.”