Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a Russian and American violinist of Jewish origin, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. He was born in Vilna in the Russian Empire into the family of violin teacher Reuven Heifetz and Chaya Sharfshtein. He began studying the violin at the age of three and quickly became known as a child prodigy.
His first teacher was the Vilna pedagogue Ilya Malkin, and from 1908 he also studied theoretical subjects with Konstantin Galkovsky. At the age of five years and ten months he appeared in public concert for the first time, and he soon performed regularly in student concerts of the Vilna branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, earning enthusiastic press reviews. By the age of twelve he was performing concertos by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Heinrich Ernst, and Max Bruch, as well as works by Niccolò Paganini, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pablo de Sarasate, and Fritz Kreisler.
In 1910 Heifetz entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, first studying with O. A. Nalbandyan and later with Leopold Auer. His rise to world fame began with concerts in Berlin in 1912, where he performed with the Berlin Philharmonic under Vasily Safonov and Arthur Nikisch, followed by a concert in Hamburg. During a European tour in 1913 he visited Sweden and Germany and met Fritz Kreisler. In 1916, as part of Auer's class, he toured Scandinavia.
He first visited the United States in 1917 and gave his American debut at Carnegie Hall on 17 October of that year. Afterward he chose to remain in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1925. On 7 November 1917 he made his first commercial recording. In 1934 he toured the Soviet Union, giving six concerts in Moscow and Leningrad and meeting with students of the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories to discuss performance and violin teaching.
During the Second World War, Heifetz often performed for soldiers at the front in order to raise morale. A notable later episode came during his fourth tour of Israel in 1953, when he included Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata in his program despite government requests to change it. At the time Strauss was viewed by many Israelis as a Nazi composer and his music was unofficially banned along with Wagner's. Heifetz insisted on his artistic independence, received threatening letters, and after a concert in Jerusalem was attacked by a young man with an iron bar, injuring his right hand. His final concert of the tour was cancelled, and he did not return to Israel until 1970.
Heifetz stopped giving concerts in 1972 and turned to teaching at California universities, first at the University of California and then at the University of Southern California. There he worked alongside his friends and colleagues Gregor Piatigorsky and William Primrose. In the 1980s he also gave private lessons at his home in Beverly Hills. His students included Pierre Amoyal, Erick Friedman, Rudolf Koelman, Yuval Yaron, Eugene Fodor, Carol Sindell, Adam Han-Gorski, Robert Witte, Elizabeth Matesky, Claire Hodgkins, Yukiko Kamei, Varoujan Kojian, Sherry Kloss, Elaine Skorodin, Paul Rosenthal, and Ayke Agus.
Heifetz died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on 10 December 1987, and his ashes were scattered over the sea. His legacy continued through institutions and remembrance, including the International Jascha Heifetz Violin Competition, founded in 2001 in his native Vilnius. Among the honors mentioned in the article are his appointment as Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1957, an honorary doctorate in musicology from Northwestern University in 1949, and honorary vice-presidency of the International Castelnuovo-Tedesco Society in 1977.