Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) was a violinist born in Vilnius, trained by Leopold Auer in Saint Petersburg and acclaimed in the United States from his Carnegie Hall debut in 1917. For generations of musicians, his name has been synonymous with instrumental perfection: exact intonation, an intense sound, absolute command of the bow. He recorded much of the violin repertoire and commissioned new works that are now twentieth-century classics.
Heifetz was born on 2 February 1901 in Vilnius, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, a violinist, put the instrument in his hands at the age of three, and by seven he was playing the Mendelssohn concerto in public. In 1910 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire, in the class of Leopold Auer, the great master of the Russian violin school.
In 1917, in the midst of revolution, the family left Russia and settled in the United States. On 27 October of that year, aged sixteen, Heifetz made his Carnegie Hall debut. The concert passed into history: the story goes that the violinist Mischa Elman, sitting in the hall, remarked that it was hot, and that the pianist Leopold Godowsky replied, not for pianists.
Heifetz recorded for six decades. His versions of the Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven and Sibelius concertos remain benchmark recordings, and his chamber music with Arthur Rubinstein and Gregor Piatigorsky brought together some of the finest instrumentalists of the age.
He also enlarged the repertoire. William Walton wrote his concerto for him, first performed in 1939; in 1947 he gave the premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's concerto, and he commissioned from Miklós Rózsa a work that is now part of the repertoire. His transcriptions, such as Dinicu's Hora staccato and Ponce's Estrellita, became classic encores.
What set Heifetz apart was the standard he demanded of himself and of the instrument: fast tempi, an intense vibrato, clean articulation at any speed and a total economy of gesture on stage. His impassive bearing sometimes earned him the charge of coldness.
The recordings tell another story: beneath the control lie ardent phrasing and constant expressive tension. Colleagues and critics agreed that he had changed the standard of violin playing, and after him no violinist could be measured by the old rules.
Gradually withdrawing from the stage, Heifetz gave his last recital in Los Angeles in 1972 and concentrated on teaching at the University of Southern California, where his masterclasses were filmed. He died in Los Angeles on 10 December 1987.
His figure continues to attract documentary makers and biographers. The documentary God's Fiddler traces his life through archive footage and testimony, and each generation of violinists returns to his recordings as to a benchmark.
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