Perlman was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were Jewish natives of Poland and had independently emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in the mid-1930s before they met and later married. Perlman contracted polio at age four and has walked using leg braces and crutches since then[3] and plays the violin while seated. As of 2018, he uses crutches or an electric scooter for mobility.[4]
When Perlman was three years old, he sat and listened attentively to a violin recital on the radio, which inspired him to become a violinist. His mother soon bought him a toy violin, and he instantly taught himself to play melodies. His parents tried to enroll him at the Shulamit Conservatory, but he was denied admission for being too small to hold a violin.[5] Despite his handicap, he began learning the violin a year later. His first teacher was a café violinist. At age five, Perlman was admitted to the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv (now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music), where he studied for eight years with Rivka Goldgart, a violin teacher of Russian origin, and gave his first recital at age ten.[6][7] He moved to the United States at age 13 to study at the Juilliard School and Meadowmount School of Music[2] with the violin teacher Ivan Galamian and his assistant Dorothy DeLay.[8]
Perlman lives in New York City with his wife, Toby, also a classically trained violinist. They have five children, including Navah Perlman, a concert pianist and chamber musician. Perlman is a distant cousin of the Canadian comic and television personality Howie Mandel.[40] He has synesthesia and was interviewed for Tasting the Universe by Maureen Seaberg, which is about the condition.[41]
Tradition (1987)
Duos (1987)
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons/3 Violin Concertos (1992)
(Sony Classical, 1994, and Kultur Video, 2007)
Dvořák in Prague: A Celebration
The American Album (1995)
In the Fiddler's House (1995)
Holiday Tradition (1998)
(EMI, 1999)
Concertos from My Childhood
The Essential Itzhak Perlman (Sony Classical, 2009)
Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul (Sony Classical, 2012) with
Yitzchak Meir Helfgot
Violin Sonatas (Universal Music Classics/Deutsche Grammophon, 2015)
