Nathan Milstein

Born in Odessa, Russian Empire, - American violinist. January 13, 1904 (O.S. December 31, 1903) - December 21, 1992

the fourth child of seven, to a middle-class Jewish family with no musical background Milstein’s mother recognized Nathan’s early interest in music and forced her young son to take violin lessons, hoping it would keep him out of trouble. In 1909, Milstein began to study with Odessa’s most prestigious violin teacher, Pyotr Stolyarsky, with whom he studied until the summer of 1914. (One of his fellow students was six-year old David Oistrakh.) When Milstein was 11, Leopold Auer invited him to become one of his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.