Itzhak Perlman slashes $17m house price
NewsItzhak and Toby Perlman have relisted their Upper West Side townhouse for sale at a considerably reduced price.
Last put up for sale for $17.5 million in March 2022, the pad if now going for just $11.9 million.
At 8,000 square feet, the property includes five or six bedrooms, six fireplaces, five bathrooms, four powder rooms and an indoor pool.
For sale via Richard Steinberg at Compass.
Some people are just determined to undermine the “poor starving artist’ image we have worked so hard to craft.
Mr. Perlman earned it..and then some.
Let’s also remember the times in which he has been performing. With the CD revolution in the early ’80s, the record companies wanted all their major ‘stars’ to rerecord previously recorded repertoire for cds sold at a much higher price than LPs. Accordingly they paid very handsomely for the privilege. Royalties were also much higher.
Even when the gloss over high priced cds began to drop off with Naxos jumping in and revolutionising the economics of that market, there was the revolution in management with the arrival of Mark McCormack and his worldwide sports empire. He was making gazillions for his large stable of top sports stars and believed there was untapped earning potential in at least some classical stars. Little wonder that after the mini-revolution at ICM Artists, one of the first to leave and join the young IMG Artists was Perlman. I have no idea how much more they obtained for him in fees or how much in sponsorships (Fuji Xerox in Japan was one), but additionally – and unusually – he certainly got commissions on some of his concerts.
Like sport and other endeavours, classical music will always have its star names. And the public will always be prepared to cough up more for the privilege of hearing them, whether the rest of us like it or not.
It’s only actually worth $76
I’m so very happy to see that great performers are so generously rewarded for their immense efforts to keep the art form on the rails in these modern, uncultured times. They show that the classical music business is Big Business indeed, and that the sorry ‘idealism’ of earlier periods where musicians were so crazy to make sacrifices for the sake of an ideal of High Art, are finally overcome.
A welcome circumstance is that since the first half of the last century, really gifted composers have died-out, without needing a meteorite like the poor dinosaurs, so that a beautiful museum culture of preserved pieces that everybody knows and that everybody wants to hear again and again, especially by the great performers, has nothing to fear from any disturbance from outside. Also these pieces are free, they don’t cost any money in terms of expensive commissions for money-grabbing composers, or – worse – royalties on performances. Indeed, the best of any possible circumstances.
This is nonsense, of course, though these days distinguishing satire from prejudice is a tough job for the reader.
Perlman made his debut 60 years ago and in the USA, which at that time paid much greater attention to classical music. His career also coincided with the high point of the recording companies. So yes, he made “immense efforts” by dint of having played for many more years than most performers alive today (Barenboim etc excepted), and through the chance of making many more recordings than artists are able to make currently.
As for the stuck record of the comments regarding “really gifted composers” it’s become utterly boring to hear that repeated time and again, from people who cant accept that the world moves on and art changes. Also, it’s rather insulting to listeners who do get pleasure from music written over the past 70 years, and it’s extremely churlish to denigrate that pleasure, rather than accept that tastes differ and shouldn’t be dictated.
I have friends who go to museums and when on holiday visit such crumbling places like Venice, very childish all of that, as if they want to live during the medieval plague and lack of plumbing. And I have an old lonely aunt who goes to concerts and says she is fond of this wig person, forgotten the name but you know, old people’s music. Move on, move on! I say but no she got stuck. It’s amazing how narrow-minded people can be.
Sally
That’s an pointless and insolent response, Sally. I never said anything about ceasing to like works of art created before 1950, as you well know.
I’m bored though of the narrow-minded people who dictate that great art only happened before that date, and who keep making derogatory remarks about newer works of art which other people enjoy. Why do you insist on spoiling other people’s pleasure?
Sorry about that…. I will try to fire her again.
“Last put up for sale for $17.5 million in March 2022, the pad if now going for just $11.9 million.”
Incorrect. It was first put up at $17.5m, and a few months later dropped down to $15.5m, and a few months later in 2022 it was taken off the market. Manhattan home prices overall have dropped 22% since middle of 2022 through July of this year.
It’s delightful to see the GRAMMYs in the red room, facing the much-used treadmill.
The bigger story is where is Mr Perlman planning to move once his home sells? His presence in Manhattan will always be felt
He has a massive residence in the Hamptons. And they could probably manage a pied-à-terre in town. After all, they only paid $2.1 mill for the brownstone in 1990 (God, those were the days).
Of what, exactly? Safe streets, maybe?
He also has a country place up-state. Have seen him doing interviews from the garden.
He’ll be ok…
…..just bought it ……visitors welcome any time!
You’d think in a cultured city like NYC, someone would pay the full asking just cos it’s a ‘Perlman House’.
But this being Manhattan, then they’d be so angry when they’d learn that the home they’d purchased wasn’t Ron Perelman’s.
Which somehow reminds me of the story, supposedly true, that someone once asked violinist Fritz Kreisler for his autograph and Kreisler graciously agreed. When the person said something like “we’ve always loved the cars your company makes” he had the presence of mind to sign his name as “Walter Chrysler.”
Elmer Bernstein had graciously accepted compliments for his West Side Story.
That ancient TV though… Can I has it?
Great! That means I can now afford to buy it!
sometimes it can take 2 years to sell a
house in the uk.
even when you drop
the price.
Some years back, Domingo’s LA apartment was on the market for about $¼ million.
I didn’t think one got anything for that amount in LA. A realtor told me that it was a fair price for the property, but he was surprised that Domingo was not trying to extract a celebrity premium.
That went against all his instincts as a realtor.
Interesting to compare the price with that of Sonny Rollins’s former home in Germantown, NY, which he sold for $238,500 ten years ago.
Interesting how the likes of Perlman and Zuckerman were marketed to the heavens throughout the latter part of the last century yet I can hardly name one memorable desert island disc from either of these two today. Just a testament to the power of marketing and top notch artist management…..
Isaac Stern once told me that he was the one who discovered both Perlman and Zukerman when they were young teens in Israel. He was with the Sol Hurok Management at the time and basically “told” Hurok he had to bring them and their families to the US, pay the families each $100 per week, manage their careers but only he, Stern, could approve which concerts and events they took part in until they had finished at Juilliard. The Hurok PR machine then took over part of their lives.
After Hurok’s death, both moved over to the relatively new ICM Artists which was – to all intents and purposes – run by Stern, whatever Marvin Josephson the Chairman of the larger ICM group thought! Both then left after Shelly Gold’s unexpected death aged 55 in 1985 when Lee Lamont took over. I believe Lee had at one time been Stern’s secretary. The two violinists used the changeover to move to new management – Perlman to IMG Artists with all its cash and Zukerman to Shirley Kirshbaum who then almost exclusively ran a PR company. So both artists continued to have major PR behind them.
Record labels’ requirement to sell their new CD formats obviously continued played a role in keeping their names in front of the public. But touring is always stressful and a large number of superb younger violinists were in the ascendency, almost all commanding much lower fees than Perlman and Zukerman – at least initially. Recording fees would also have been lower. Plus other agencies were promoting their own artists. Anne Sophie Mutter, Joshua Bell, Viktoria Mullova, Sarah Chang, Midori, Hilary Hahn, Maxim Vengerov and a host of others, even including Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (of whom we have heard little in recent years but Ronald Wilford at CAMI was promoting her very heavily in the late 1980s and 90s) all came to the fore, some for much longer than others.
As they age, some artists as did Rubinstein still enjoy touring and giving concerts. Others prefer an easier life – or have it forced on them when the fees they can command are no longer on offer. Such is an artist’s life!