The Rifleman’s Violin

In July 1945, 19-year-old rifleman Stuart Canin found himself on the veranda of President Harry S. Truman’s temporary “little White House” in Potsdam, Germany. The president asked Canin to play the violin in order to break the ice of tense negotiations that would determine the post WWII fate of the world. Canin would become an internationally acclaimed concertmaster for Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, John Williams, but he was never so nervous as when he was summoned by the Commander in Chief to perform for Stalin and Churchill on the eve of the Cold War.