What is it about Itzhak Perlman that inspires such devoted fans, asks Peter Dobrin. Surely not his music-making alone. “A blindfold test in the first movement would have revealed an often-dull player with moments of difficulty with intonation. I’m not saying that in total the Perlman experience was a bad one, or even that his shortcomings outweighed his assets. But would a fresh-faced recent Juilliard School graduate have gotten the same response from this audience with exactly the same performance? Hardly. It’s a point worth considering if only because perpetuation of the art form will require cultivating love for the next one or two Itzhak Perlmans – or dozen.”