Ilya Malkin
Ilya Malkin, documented as Eliya Nokhim-Davidovich Malkin and known in the United States as Elias Malkin, was a Russian and American music teacher, best known as Jascha Heifetz's first teacher. He spent his youth in Chausy before entering the violin class of Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He completed his studies in 1886, worked briefly in Moscow, and then returned to St. Petersburg to pass courses in harmony and music theory and receive a Free Artist diploma in 1892.
Malkin subsequently settled in Vilna, where he taught privately and occasionally appeared as a conductor. Among other engagements, he conducted the orchestra of the Jewish Theatre, which existed for only one season and in which Reuven Heifetz, Jascha Heifetz's father, played violin. From 1898, following the opening of the music school of the Vilna branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, Malkin taught violin there; his pupils at the school included Mark Reentovich.
Jascha Heifetz initially studied with Malkin at the teacher's home on Bolshaya Street and later attended his classes at the music school from 1906 to 1909. Malkin's students regularly appeared successfully in public student concerts. At one such concert, on December 7, 1906, Heifetz made his first public appearance at the age of five years and ten months, performing Jean-Baptiste Singelée's Pastoral Fantasy to special notice from a newspaper reviewer. Heifetz's subsequent student-concert performances under Malkin also received enthusiastic reviews.
In 1908, Malkin arranged an audition for the seven-year-old Heifetz with Leopold Auer during Auer's visit to Vilna. A short memoir by Malkin about his lessons with Heifetz was published in the newspaper Maariv in 1950, on the occasion of Heifetz's tour of Israel. Malkin later emigrated to the United States, where he continued teaching; his American pupils included Leon Schwartz.