Indian-summer careers for violinists aren't unusual, but they're always a surprise, since the musculature required to play the instrument often doesn't hold up nearly as long as a pianist's. The late Nathan Milstein recorded some of his best performances in his 80s. American violinist Camilla Wicks successfully emerged from retirement in her late 60s with Alban Berg's fearsome Violin Concerto. Rosand's longevity has partly to do with playing smart, not hard. The left hand on the fingerboard, he believes, must be light as a feather.
Nothing is forced.
All is comfortable. The violin has only a limited amount of sound, and if you go beyond that limit, everything begins to sound more or less the same. Such technique has allowed him to outlive his own eclipse. A child prodigy while growing up in Chicago, Rosand performed with a number of surly but great pre-World War II conductors. As a particularly impressionable student of Curtis' legendary Efrem Zimbalist, Rosand absorbed the Russian romantic ethos of the previous century.