Special Interview Cellist Eager to Get to Israel

Nathaniel Rosen, the 30-year-old California cellist who won a gold medal in the recent Tschaikovsky competition in Moscow against rivals from 19 countries, has never been to Israel and he wants to get there as soon as he can. “I am looking forward very much to go to Israel,” he said. With a sense of anticipation, the young cellist added: “I am sure it will happen. I want to make it happen very soon.”

Rosen, who talked proudly of being from “a Jewish family,” spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the Great Hall of the White House where he and Violinist Elmar Oliveira, of Hartford, Conn were honored yesterday at a reception by President and Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Joan Mondale, the Vice President’s wife.

Rosen and Oliveira were the first American citizens to receive the medal in 20 years. It was also the first time that two Americans have won in the same year.

Rosen, who switched from piano to cello when he was six years old, never had his bar mitzcah because “I was so busy practicing I didn’t get to cheder,” he said. “My parents were worried about my paternal grandfather because I wasn’t in cheder preparing for the bar mitzvah but my grandfather said, in Yiddish, that I can as well establish my manhood with a cello as in a bar mitzvah ceremony.”

Grandfather Rosen, who died four years ago, emigrated with his wife to the United States from Pliskov, near Kiev. During his visit to the Soviet Union for the competition, the cellist’s father, Judge David Rosen of Los Angeles, went to the Ukraine to search out the Rosen family. “I’m not sure if he was successful,” the cellist said.

QUESTIONED BY SOVIET MUSICIANS

While in Moscow, Soviet musicians asked him if he were Jewish, the young cellist said. “Only Jewish musicians asked me,” he remarked. Judging from the number of them who sought to learn if he were Jewish, he observed, many of the musicians in the Moscow orchestras must be Jewish.

Rosen, who is slim, personable and outgoing, said he was inspired to a musical career by his father’s own musical bent. “My father is a violinist when he is not being a judge, and he taught music as a young man,” the cellist said. “Every Friday night at our home my father, two friends and I formed a quartet. That was our Sabbath celebration.”

The cellist’s father is the presiding judge of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeals Board of California. His mother, Mrs. Frances Rosen, whose parents emigrated from “between Austria and Poland,” is executive secretary of the Richard Cliburn Foundation of Los Angeles, that aides young musicians. The cellist’s brother, Stephen, is a lawyer.

Born in Altadena, California, the cellist studied at Altadena City College and the University of Southern California. Asked if he were affiliated with a Jewish organization, the cellist replied, “No, I don’t now but my feeling is with the brotherhood of the Jewish people.”