Other Artists on Heifetz

 

Ivry Gitlis

 

ON HEIFETZ

I played chamber music with Heifetz. I loved him and I think he was fond of me. Once, we decided to meet in Paris, and when I arrived and called at the George V Hotel they said Heifetz had just left for Venice. I was upset and wrote him a letter saying how sad I was, and that I was coming back to Los Angeles next year, but I got no answer. So after a while I sent another letter, but no answer. I got to LA and called him up, but no answer. Then a close friend of his told me that he was looking forward to seeing me so much that when he came to Paris and got the message from the answering service, he thought I was playing the same joke that he played on everyone else and that I didn’t want to see him. So we didn’t see each other for two or three years. The last time I saw him was a year or so before he died. I was in Los Angeles and I spent a few afternoons in his house. I want to cry when I think of it. He was always lonely. He was unique. They say that if you were near to him you could hear the hissing sound that you hear on the recordings. So many people today when they want to play stronger use more bow, but that doesn’t mean anything. There is an obsession today about playing big. - STRAD

 

Pierre Amoyal

 

I grew up immersed in the French school of playing. While studying at the Paris Conservatoire, I was particularly influenced by Gaston Poulet, Roland Charmy and the Quatuor Calvet. All of them were so integrated into French musical culture that I grew strong roots in the style. These were completely uprooted when I moved to Los Angeles to study with Jascha Heifetz, who gave me a broader outlook on the world of violin playing and the ingredients needed to build an international career. He had such a wide understanding of what it meant to be a musician and knew every facet of the job. It was an extraordinary privilege to be guided by him, and although it was a shock at first, I absorbed it with lots of passion and interest.

 

At 17 years old I was originally supposed to study in Moscow with David Oistrakh. The move to LA all started with a lesson with Heifetz in Paris. It was horrible; he was so cruel. I played every possible concerto, scales in 10ths and so much more. Once it ended I never wanted to hear from the man again! But a month later I received a telegram inviting me to his studio. I was conflicted but ultimately chose to go to him. I very simply wanted to understand how he played the way he did. When I nervously approached Oistrakh with my decision, he responded: ‘If you don’t go and study with Heifetz, I will!’

 

My five years with Heifetz allowed me to start a career when I came back to Paris. I had built a large repertoire and gained a discipline that I could use in every facet of my career. He also gave me a passion for teaching. I remember once playing the Saint-Saëns Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for him. I was terrified. His recording of the piece was my ideal. After I played, he said, ‘I really don’t like it but don’t change a note, because if you play like that you will be very successful.’ I realised at that moment what it meant to be a great teacher, and when I returned to Paris I immediately accepted the role of professor at the Conservatoire, partly because it was a way to remember what he had taught me and share it with others. I’ve always kept to his ideology of developing students’ talents rather than forcing them all to sound the same. You don’t make violinists like you make croissants.

 

- STRAD

 

 

Glenn Dicterow

 

’Since I was a young violinist, I have been heavily influenced by the artistry of Jascha Heifetz,’ Dicterow said. ’It had always been my dream to someday return to USC to teach, where, as a young teenager, I had the privilege of studying with this iconic genius.

 

’I have spent my entire life espousing Heifetz’s unique musical interpretations, as well as his dazzling technique. As testified by my numerous students over the years, I have always championed Heifetz’s recordings, which continue to inspire us. He brought such unique style, imagination and colour to the vast repertoire he performed.

 

’My aim is to carry on the message of Jascha Heifetz to a new generation of musicians who may not be as familiar with his truly remarkable, one-of-a-kind music making.’

·       STRAD

 

Sherry Kloss

 

 

I was the subject of Jascha Heifetz’s teaching as a member of his class during his last years of masterclasses at the University of Southern California. He taught us his own personal beliefs and methods, including a regular regime of warm-ups, scales, etudes and vibrato exercises; the resolution of technical passagework; the discovery of colours; sight-reading (especially the Martinů Etudes rhythmiques); chamber music (including duos, quartets, quintets, piano trios and quartets); viola and piano skills.

 

Most of all, Heifetz inspired us continually to seek excellence.

 

The warm-up Perhaps the most important of these was the warm-up, which consisted of drawing long, slow bows beginning on the open G string and continuing a scale up two octaves to the E string, with no vibrato. The next step was to play a steady crescendo on the down bow to the tip followed by a slow, steady diminuendo back to the frog.

 

Scales More complicated scales came next. He began with double-stops, although we were expected to master scales on single notes, in 3rds, 6ths, octaves and 10ths in all keys and combinations. He might ask to hear G double flat harmonic minor in 6ths – beginning on the fourth degree of the scale!

 

Etudes Kreutzer, Rode, Dont, Gaviniés, Hindemith, Paganini – as well as the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas, and difficult, ‘unplayable’ passagework including staccato bowing (in Wieniawski) and spiccato bowing (in Paganini, from memory).

 

Staccato was to be executed with a stiff arm and elbow. ‘Raise the upper arm and don’t unlock the elbow,’ Heifetz would say. ‘It should sound scratchy under the ear. This is the sound which carries in a hall.’

 

Vibrato, tone & intonation He told us that there are five different kinds of vibrato. We were expected to create at least three of them, and he taught us to work on the same passage using different areas of the fingertip to discover and develop the best places to create different types of sound – brilliant, sensuous or sweet, for example. Heifetz advised us ‘not to copy anyone’, and we spent much time on the discovery of tone production. Intonation was not addressed in itself; our teacher believed that, ‘If they don’t hear themselves, it doesn’t do much good for me to tell them.’

 

Expression When something did demand attention, he might offer a fingering suggestion or ask the other students to come up with a solution. Expression was of major importance. A student might present a fiendishly difficult work, note-perfect, performed with verve, only to hear Heifetz comment, ‘But can you say something? If you have no ideas of your own, learn by listening to others.’

 

Competitions Occasionally there were in-class competitions for the best scales, best 10ths and the best staccato. The students voted for each other, and at the end Heifetz added his own appraisal. He forbade his students from entering other competitions, however. If he discovered that someone had disobeyed this rule, they were thrown out of the class. ‘Who is judging you? What are their credentials?’ he would ask.

·       STRAD

 

Ayke Agus

 

’Well, if Heifetz had a method, it was probably the one he learnt from Auer,’ Agus says. ‘We all tend to emulate the teachers who made the biggest impact on us.’

 

She lists a number of comparisons and contrasts between the Auer and Heifetz methods:

 

    ‘Neither focused on technical matters, choosing instead to work on deepening their students’ interpretative skills and general musical understanding – although both were sticklers for technical accuracy as required for proper service to the music’

    ‘Auer didn’t demonstrate much whereas Heifetz demonstrated a great deal. The only downfall of these demonstrations was that the playing was so magical it was almost always impossible for the poor student to focus on whatever point was being demonstrated!’

    ‘Both Auer and Heifetz accepted no excuse for lack of discipline or for sloppiness. They both expected intelligent work habits and great attention to detail. The weekly lesson preparation was intentionally as gruelling as for a full recital performance’

    ‘While both pushed their students to their limits, they each also remained devoted to their students’ needs.’ (At this point we speak off the record of numerous acts of exceptional generosity on Heifetz’s part – almost none of which are public knowledge, at his insistence)

    ‘Both expected every violin student to be able to play the piano and the viola – no exceptions’

 

‘In Heifetz’s class,’ she continues, ‘every student had to be ready and prepared to play at any time the following from memory, whether or not it was their day for an individual lesson: all scales and arpeggios with all their variations, an etude, a solo Bach movement and an encore piece (an “itsy-bitsy”, as he called them).’

 

The class pianist, too, was expected to be fully prepared. ‘Whichever concerto was being worked on, Heifetz insisted the opening thematic idea had to be heard in full,’ remembers Agus. ‘The pianist had to be ready to play entire tutti sections from the beginning of the piece, with the correct orchestral colours.’ She recounts one memorable occasion when Heifetz spent 20 minutes honing five bars of the opening tutti of Bruch’s First Concerto before the student was allowed finally to enter with the opening solo. Only after the pianist had proved themselves were they allowed to use the usual tutti cuts.

 

‘Heifetz also insisted that students throw their solo parts into the bin and stick to studying from the piano accompaniment score,’ says Agus. ‘It’s for this reason that the violin line in the piano parts of genuine Heifetz transcriptions include all bowings and fingerings found in the solo part. On one occasion, a publisher’s proof arrived with Heifetz’s markings removed from the piano part’s violin line. The publisher explained it was not its standard policy to include such marks in the piano part – and was, of course, summarily dropped by Heifetz, who proceeded to find another.’

 

It may be surprising to hear, too, that pencils were not allowed on the music stand in class, according to Agus. ‘Don’t write it down. Remember it!’ was Heifetz’s admonition. ‘He believed in properly training the brain, rather than simply filling a piece of paper with memory aids. He felt that most people have a greater mental ability than they realise and that almost everyone has at least some aspect of a photographic memory, which could be developed with work,’ she says. In fact, the only words allowed to be written in a student’s part were Italian musical terms – no directions from the student’s native language were permitted. ‘Heifetz always wanted his students to think musically rather than falling into the trap of thinking about music, and I think this imposed linguistic discipline was part of that goal.’

 

It’s important for us to understand that Heifetz worked as hard as he did so that he could be completely spontaneous and playful during a performance. ‘He didn’t have set bowings or fingerings,’ explains Agus. ‘Instead, he changed these according to how he was feeling in the moment, and he wanted the students to have this attitude of spontaneity, too. In the class, he would often ask a student to go back a few bars and to play again using a different set of fingerings. Occasionally, just after a student had tuned and was about to play their designated piece for the day, he would suddenly ask another student to lend their violin to the person about to play. He then instructed the first student to proceed on this completely unknown violin.’ All this was designed to promote a balanced, flexible mind and technique, so that the player was well trained to be ‘ready for the emergencies’, as he once said.

·       STRAD

 

Brooks Smith

 

Always ‘Mr Heifetz’

“He was a law unto himself,” says Smith. “The kids in his class accepted the Heifetz iciness and the ones who couldn’t simply left. But he didn’t discriminate or ever stop pursuing excellence. Very few of the concerts we played on tour pleased him. But on those rare occasions when they did, he would take me and the manager out to eat and drink and be jovial.”

Smith, who learned that Heifetz preferred the piano to the violin as a child but gave in to a stern father’s insistence on the string instrument that he himself played, was astonished the first time he witnessed his recital partner at the keyboard.

“He wanted me to suggest something for a program we were going to do with his friends. I mentioned the Franck Quintet, at which point he sat down, and played, from memory, the first allegro of the opening-- the most difficult part. Note perfect.”

( https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-05-08-ca-3743-story.html )            

 

Eugene Fodor

 

Eugene Fodor, who died in 2011, counted among his teachers not only Ivan Galamian and Joseph Gingold, but also Jascha Heifetz. He took first prize in the Paganini Competition in 1972 and then made history by entering and winning second prize (no first was awarded) at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1974, at a time when relations between the USSR and the USA were particularly strained.

 

He remembered his lessons with Heifetz below:

 

'The first day I met Heifetz I felt so drawn to him - it was an eerie kind of feeling. The shape of his head, his ears, his forehead - it sounds silly - but they were almost identical to my uncle John's! It was weird - you see someone you've revered all your life, and then you meet them, and feel like you're seeing family.

 

When he invited me to his house and I played for him, I was quite relaxed, and I played well. He was really very nice to me that day and invited me to join his class on a full scholarship. I always felt his closeness the entire time I was with him.

 

Heifetz had a marvellous sense of humour. There was always a lightness, a boyishness, underneath the grim exterior. I was never intimidated because I could feel the lightness bubbling up. It was one of the most enjoyable years of my life.

 

My studies with Heifetz were an affirmation of the principles of solid technique, discipline and preparation that I'd adopted early in life, partly as a result of his inspiration through recordings. Having studied the mechanisms of his left and right hands, I tried to adopt his technical style of playing, at least in principle.

 

Especially in concerts, with the electricity of people listening, I enjoy being very focused. I don't swerve and swing around on stage because it detracts from the important principle of balance on which violin playing depends. The weight of the bow is measured in terms of grams and half grams - it's that subtle. When one tilts the angle of the violin, the weight of the upper half of the bow is changed dramatically. You have to readjust the balance of the bow to whatever motions the violin is going through. I'm surprised that so often students don't realise that attacks of the bow should be coordinated with the violin held still.

 

That's how Heifetz was able to play with such perfection - it's the motionless left arm that's essential to consistent technical accuracy. It also affects musical concentration - not to mention the distraction for the audience if someone is constantly swerving from side to side.

 

Bow control is closely related to this steadiness. The player should keep the right thumb bent, the fingers somewhat curved, and the elbow low and relaxed. Allowing the fingers to remain curved at all times gives greater elasticity to bow changes and allows the hair to be angled for pianissimo or flattened for stronger strokes. It also assists in producing a smooth sound when playing low on the bow, giving more power without sounding rough.

 

Perlman

 

Your Symphonie Espagnole is very nice, but I would like to hear some scales...'

Violinist Itzhak Perlman remembers his first meeting with the great Jascha Heifetz when he played to him as a 14-year-old student at the Juilliard School in New York.

 

 

Henryk Szering

called him ‘the emperor’, (20)

 

David Oistrakh

 

said ‘there are many violinists – then there’s Heifetz’.

 

Isaac Stern

said of him ‘Heifetz represents a standard of polished execution unrivalled in memory by any violinist either by book or by personal knowledge’. (21)

Even Frank Sinatra was an admirer

– saying that he ‘influenced and shaped’ his way of singing and interpretation.’ (22) Many violinists found their careers suffered with Heifetz’s appearance on the scene  

Artur Rubinstein

He added ‘I know every violinist worth knowing and Heifetz is the worst man I ever met. He’s a great musician, but absolutely awful as a person….’ (25) Many of their problems stemmed from the fact that they were very different personalities, as is illustrated when Rubinstein recounts in his memoirs taking Heifetz to what was in effect an orgy! – Heifetz was extremely uncomfortable and Rubinstein wrote ‘I was highly amused, but Jascha Heifetz almost fainted. He begged me to leave….’ (26)

Carl Flesch

“He is, and will remain, the high priest of our profession”

 

Fritz Kreisler

“we may as well break our fiddles across our knees”

 

Carol Neblett

Heifetz had his bright social side, however, and was a genial host at his many parties. On those occasions, he invariably invited Carol Neblett, whom he urged on in her successful singing career and knew as a child--her mother having been his personal secretary for 25 years.

 

“ ‘Keep things lively,’ he used to say,” recalls the American soprano, explaining that he liked her “gregariousness.” “ ‘You know how these string players are,’ he would complain of his students. ‘They don’t know how to have fun.

“Heifetz didn’t like people to be fearful of him. He always spotted it. I think he was hurt also by the negative press and felt culturally isolated--that’s why his best friends were from the old country.

 

“I always felt sorry that he was so misunderstood. Few people know how real and generous he was because he hid his vulnerability. He didn’t play the celebrity game. He was not out to make points. Let ordinary people do that. He didn’t have to.”

Heifetz’ comments on / attitudes towards other players

 

Ivry Gitlis

Heifetz’ good friend

David Oisktrakh

Held a minutes silence in the class when he passed away (Sherry Kloss)

Unfortunate impact on other virtuosos

 

Many violinists found their careers suffered with Heifetz’s appearance on the scene – Henry Roth says – ‘In one fell swoop, the boy Heifetz eliminated the traditional artificial separation between so called bravura techniques, lyric orientated players and specialized stylists. Elite pupils of his own teacher, Auer, along with leading lights from the studios of Hubay, Sevcik, Flesch and Ysaye were instantly downgraded following his sensational debut’. (23) Dr Axelrod, in his biography of Heifetz, wrote – ‘Jan Kubelik was considered as one of the greatest violinists of his time until Heifetz came on the scene….Many violinists celebrated Heifetz’s debut by retiring from the concert stage’. (24)