Jascha Heifetz: Early Years in Russia

Author’s Preface

ix The idea for a book about the childhood of Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) did not arise overnight, and the story behind the book is notable in and of itself. In the middle of the 1980s, I was conducting research in the personal archive of the violinist and music critic Viktor Grigoryevich Valter (Walter) (1865–1935) in the Russian Institute for the History of the Arts. The documents and materials were fascinating, but nothing stood out as particularly significant. At that time, I did not know a surprise was hidden in a particular folder that a previous owner had labeled ,“unidentified.”InthatfolderIdiscoveredcorrespondenceaddressed to Valter—letters and telegrams signed by a certain R. Heifetz and his son Joseph. Judging by the postage stamps and the address of the sender, these letterswerewrittenfromVilnius,Lithuaniainthesummerof1911andfrom Loschwitz, Germany, near Dresden, in the summer of 1913. A tiny but enthusiasticvoicerangoutfromthestillnessofthearchive :“MuchRespected Viktor Grigoryevich! I am on vacation now, and only practicing violin and piano a little bit. I am now studying the Tchaikovsky Concerto and the Handel Sonata. . . .” My immediate impression that these words belonged to the great Heifetz was confirmed only when I reached the very last piece of correspondence in the folder, which was signed, simply, “Jascha.” AUTHOR’S PREFACE x Author’s Preface In 1991, for the ninetieth anniversary of Heifetz’s birth, I published this discovery from the Valter archive in the magazine Sovetskaya muzyka; my four-page article led to a fortunate meeting.1 In 1993 Robert Heifetz, the eldest son of the great violinist, sought me out in Russia. His desire to learn as much as possible about the Russian years of his father’s life served as a further inspiration. Robert continued to support the project enthusiastically and ensured that it could be completed. Robert’s wife, Albina Starkova-Heifetz, also took an active part in the creation of this “Russian” biography of Jascha Heifetz. She devoted much effort, time, and love to the book, and worked alongside me in various archives, collecting and piecing together information about members of the large Heifetz family, as well as reading and editing the manuscript at every stage. She is the full co-author of this biography, and the original Russian publication was made possible with her generous financial support. Without the inspiring influence and practical assistance of Robert and Albina, this book would not exist. The great violinist Jascha Heifetz lived a long and brilliant life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. As fate would have it, his biography is divided into two parts. He lived in Russia for the first sixteen and a half years of his life, and spent the remaining seventy years in the UnitedStates.Despitethedifferenceinlength,bothperiodsofhislifehold equal significance. The Russian years encompass his childhood and early youth—the stages of his initial growth and development and the years in which his performance style took shape. The American period saw Heifetz rise to a level of supreme mastery of performance—a level that profoundly influenced the art of the violin in the twentieth century. Heifetz himself defined the major milestones of his life in the following succinct manner: “Born in Russia, first lessons at 3, debut in Russia at 7, debut in America in 1917.”2 The very beginning of this extraordinary life was in Russia. The political realities of the past century—both the era of Stalinism and the years of the Cold War—played a significant role in the division of Heifetz’s life into these two separate stages. Western writers offer only general impressions of Heifetz’s Russian period, and likewise, Soviet musicalstudiesdisplayonlyarestrainedinterestinhisAmericanyears .Thefact that Heifetz emigrated from Russia to a foreign country after the 1917 Feb- xi Author’s Preface ruaryRevolutionprovedtobeanideologicalobstacleforSovietwriters.All the same, they did write about him. Lev Raaben’s 1962 book, Leopold Auer: A Sketch of His Life and Career, is the only work to include documentary evidence concerning Heifetz’s student years at the St. Petersburg Conservatory . Toward the end of the Thaw, Raaben also published the only Russiantextdedicated entirelyto Heifetz,a biographicalessay entitled“Jascha (Joseph Robertovich) Heifetz,” which he included in his book The Lives of Remarkable Violinists. This twelve-page essay describes Heifetz’s life and career and dedicates three and a half pages specifically to the early Russian period of his life and his subsequent 1934 return to the Soviet Union on tour. The next publication about Heifetz came out in Russia a quarter...