-
Chapter 2: The Lullaby of Brody—Childhood Experiences
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
39 chapter 2 The Lullaby of Brody—Childhood Experiences Two Russian old-timers meet and get acquainted: “Where are you from?” “St. Petersburg.” “Where were you educated?” “Petrograd.” “Where did you grow up?” “Leningrad.” “Where would you like to be?” “St. Petersburg.” dimitri tiomkin, Please Don’t Hate Me, p. 84 T here is more than sardonic humor in the above exchange, even though the citizen’s last wish could have been fulfilled in 1991.1 For the Russian-Jewish musician of the early twentieth century, St. Petersburg was the gateway to freedom. Five million Jews had been corralled within the Pale of Settlement2 as a result of which they were “beyond the pale,” in the catchphrase sense of being closed off to their greater surroundings. Actually, by this time some Jews had broken through quota systems and had begun participating in certain professions and living in urban populations. They had occupied the territory in the southwestern Russian empire since the mideighteenth century, and some restrictions had been relaxed; but they were not allowed to live in imperial St. Petersburg. At the same time, the dictates of Orthodoxy fomented restrictions within Jewish communities. Creatively speaking, this tug of war of reaching out and being held back ultimately was a galvanizing force. Jewish-born Anton Rubinstein (18391894 ), the pianist-composer who founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862 and married into the Russian aristocracy, was able to do so only because he had been converted to Christianity at an early age. Hungarian-born violinist Leopold Auer (1845-1930) had an easier time of it, becoming an illustrious pedagogue on the strength of his musicianship alone, which would have been much harder if not for the groundwork laid down by Rubinstein. In fact, Auer was given the rank of nobleman. One of his Jewish child prodigies, Mischa Elman (1891-1967), was plucked out of the Pale of Settlement and resettled into the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The father of American pianist Gary Graffman, having used his gifts as a violinist to escape the Vilna ghetto, became Auer’s teaching assistant. Child prodigy Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) had greater difficulty, trudging back and forth over the border of Poland into Russia with his father. The problem was solved when his father, who was Jascha’s teacher, was himself enrolled as a student, making it all legitimate. In whatever way special dispensation was achieved, including the act of bribery, much sacrifice was required of both parent and child before residence could be, and after residence was, taken up in St. Petersburg. The effort must have been well worth it because a certificate of graduation from the prestigious conservatory potentially was more than a meal ticket for the budding concert artist. While it did not work for every graduate (anti-Semitic policies confined conductor Ilya Musin, 1904-1999, to the conservatory as a teacher for sixty years), it also became a dwelling permit for Jascha Heifetz’s family. In effect, such a diploma meant that Jews with gifted children could then reside elsewhere in Russia, and the young-blood was given liberties unheard of for other Jews. Is it any wonder, then, that a preponderance of renowned Jewish violinists was spawned by Mother Russia? As violinist Nathan Milstein (1904-1992) allegedly put it: “a fiddle was easier to pick up and run with than a piano.” In the more poetic words of Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999): “the piano stands immovable . . . but the violin is as mobile as the violinist’s heart, as flexible and as adjustable.”3 This circumstance helps to deflate notions of Jewish specialness, that artistic gifts are due to inherited traits or genetic predisposition or other ‘racial’ malarkey. In America, where flight was no longer a concern, the weighty piano became the instrument of choice. According to an anecdote, Arthur Gershwin, George’s younger brother, gave up learning how to play the violin because George got to sit at the piano while he, Arthur, had to stand.4 (see Illustration 5) In addition to Mischa Elman and Jascha Heifetz, other Auer disciples included Sascha Jacobsen (b.1895) and Toscha Seidel (1899-1962).5 They unite forces in “Mischa, Yascha, Sascha, Toscha,” a song written by the Gershwin brothers for a party hosted by Jascha Heifetz in 1921 (see Illustration 6): In this novelty number, there is a simulation of a violinist playing on open strings and possibly a musical allusion to the Yiddish song “Dem milners trern” (The Miller’s Tears), a song...