Jascha Heifetz (Artur Weschler-Vered)

[p20] Being the musician that he was, Reuven could not disregard the benefits and importance that listening to good music and numerous other performers held for little Jascha, He meticulously presented his son with every opportunity which could enrich his musical experience - apart from the most crucial one: the first violin lesson.

[p29] Apart from the regular exercises which the lessons contained, the first major work that Jascha studied with Malkin was the Mendelssohn Concerto. By the end of the first year, altogether only three years since his first violin lesson ever, the pupil had mastered the work beautifully.

[p29–30] During his time with Malkin, Jascha was invited to appear periodically in front of the Russian public. His name became increasingly familiar to Russian concert-goers and his incredible achievements provoked repeated attempts at imitation. Overnight many parents all over Russia claimed that their wunderkinds could play as well as Jascha. Others put their children to hard practicing in order to try, in vain, to achieve the same fame. However, not even the slightest suspicion of this early fame reached little Jascha himself, and the boy remained completely unaware of the publicity and status he was acquiring. The guiding hand and ever-watchful eyes of his parents are once again in evidence. Isolation from premature and possible damaging publicity would be a natural and permanent state of affairs throughout his childhood.

[p41–42] As far as intonation is concerned, one may have heard, for instance, his student Heifetz, even quite late in his career rehearsing the Beethoven Concerto, after having performed it countless times in public, at half the normal tempo, in order to improve control of his intonation. This routine was acquired during his studies with Auer, and the method is clearly diametrically opposed to that of Ševčík.

The Bohemian teacher openly admitted that he expected eight to ten hours of practice each day from his students. In his book Violin Playing As I Teach It, Auer strongly opposes this tendency. He does not recommend a daily practice of more than three to four hours divided into shorter sessions of thirty to forty minutes. Between each session, the student must rest. As soon as he detects the slightest fatigue in either hand he should put the instrument aside and pause, advises Auer. Not surprisingly, Ševčík's method was in due course of time subjected to adverse criticism. A current accusation was that, "He is turning his students into a groups of mechanical idiots." Ševčík did not enjoy the same level of success nor as many renowned students as did Auer. As a matter of fact, no one did.

[p172] One may still remember Reuven's advice to his son 'Let the violin alone convey the emotions that the artist feels. It is rather poor showmanship to let the face express anything while playing.' That advice could later account, to some degree, for the artist's dispassionate and somewhat stiff stage appearance. But how then, does an infant interpret this kind of advice? Endlessly repeated, as it was, it becomes engraved in the child and grows instinctive, natural.

The child then unconsciously carries this sort of 'order' to the extreme, especially if his acts - in Jascha's case violin playing - are rarely acknowledged with a word of praise. In order to placate his parents the child tries to demonstrate to them that all their advice is assimilated even beyond the limit originally intended. Thus, although only the violin should evoke and express the artist's feelings, even the instrument should not do so in a 'poor display of emotions'. The violin, too, has to be subjugated and restrained in order not to divulge the inner feelings of the artist. Consequently, heart-breaking bow strokes, sweet, lingering strokes on fading notes, wrapped-in-emotion vibratos or almost any degree of rubato have no place in his deliveries. What is left is Heifetz's manner of playing: faster tempos, powerful and vibrant sonority, insulating style, all of which, combined, tend to mask the inner feelings.

[p173] What kind of a man and, moreover, what kind of an artist would eventually emerge out of a childhood throughout which he was constantly impelled to play the violin 'no matter what', with the father never fully showing his satisfaction with the quality of playing displayed and with the child persuaded to perform with an unrelenting self-control? (In an interview in 1978, Heifetz was asked by H. Axelrod whether it was true that his father always insisted on being present when Jascha the child was practicing the violin. The seventy-seven-year-old violinist refused to answer, referring to those years as 'dark, dark past'.) The answer must be - a deeply introverted personality. Jascha had no alternative but to develop accordingly. To a certain extent, emotions had to be masked, hidden, almost denied and the aloof figure of the mature Heifetz was inevitably bound to evolve out of such an infant.

[p175–176] Many predicted, during the course of his musical career, that Heifetz's art, the level of perfection which he attained and the efforts required to maintain it would exact a bitter price in terms of normal human and social behavior. To a large extent, they proved correct.

[p181] Heifetz used to say that one learns better if one laughs at the mistakes.

[p187] Superstitions do not, however, necessarily interfere with perfectionism — a dominant trait of character with Heifetz. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the violinist strove to attain this quality in every activity which he undertook, be it music, sports, collecting — even driving. An expert at ping-pong, a lifelong passion of his, Heifetz also excelled in tennis, being more than the proud winner of the American-Australian championship in the early twenties. Even the minute act of mixing drinks (he loves doing that when entertaining guests at his home), an activity which over the years almost turned into a rite, had to be done with the utmost care regarding ingredients and quantities. Above all, however, it was the perfection which he sought and found when performing his craft, which at times intimidated people and prevented their attempting to establish a more intimate contact with the violinist.