Joseph Ruvimovich Heifetz (2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1901 – December 10, 1987), commonly known as Jascha Heifetz, was a Russian and American violinist, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time. Born in Vilna, he was soon recognized as a child prodigy and was trained in the Russian violin school in Saint Petersburg. Accompanying his parents to escape the violence of the Russian Revolution, he moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees."
By the age of 18, Heifetz was the highest-paid violinist in the world. He had a long and successful concert career, including wartime service with the United Service Organizations (USO). After an injury to his right (bowing) arm in 1972, he switched his focus to teaching.
Joseph (Iosif) Ruvimovich Heifetz was born into a Jewish family in Vilna in the Russian Empire (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania). According to his birth register, he was born on 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1901, although the year has been disputed. A booklet accompanying the 46th volume of The Heifetz Collection (1994) says he was born in 1900, explaining that "Heifetz's mother advanced his birth date one year when no one was looking", though no other reliable sources confirm that his mother changed her son's age.
According to family legend, his paternal grandfather, Ilya Heifetz, was born around 1830 and worked as a teacher (melamed) at a Jewish boys' school (cheder). He lived in Polotsk in Vitebsk Governorate with his family. By the end of the 19th century, Polotsk was the center of an uyezd (district) and had a population of about 20,000, of whom 62% were Jewish. Additional details about Ilya appear on a 1943 document belonging to his son Natan, which notes, "Father: worker (tailor), mother: homemaker".
His father, Reuven (Ruvin) Heifetz, was born on 3 April [O.S. 22 March] 1873, in either Novaya Aleksandriya or Polotsk. He moved from Polotsk to Vilna around 1899. He was a local violin teacher and served as the concertmaster of the Vilna Theatre Orchestra for one season before it closed down. When Jascha was an infant, his father conducted a series of tests to observe how his son reacted to his violin playing. This convinced him that Jascha had exceptional musical potential. Before Jascha turned two, his father purchased a small violin for him and began teaching him basic violin techniques, including bowing and simple fingering.
In 1906, at the age of five, Heifetz began attending the local music school in Vilna, where he studied under Ilya Malkin. He was recognized as a child prodigy and made his public debut at the age of seven in Kovno (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. In 1910, he joined the violin class of Ionnes Nalbandian at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and later studied for six years with the renowned violin teacher Leopold Auer. Heifetz's education under Auer emphasized a rigorous, technical approach that prioritized scales, a clear sound, and mental discipline over natural talent. This experience informed Heifetz's austere performance style.
He played in Germany and Scandinavia and met Fritz Kreisler for the first time in a Berlin private house, in a "private press matinee on May 20, 1912. The home was that of Arthur Abell, the pre-eminent Berlin music critic for the American magazine, Musical Courier. Among other noted violinists in attendance was Fritz Kreisler. After the 12-year-old Heifetz performed the Mendelssohn violin concerto, Abell reported that Kreisler said to all present, 'We may as well break our fiddles across our knees.'"
Heifetz visited much of Europe while still in his teens. In April 1911, he performed in an outdoor concert in Saint Petersburg before 25,000 spectators; there was such a reaction that police officers needed to protect the young violinist after the concert. In 1914, he performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Arthur Nikisch. The conductor said he had never heard such an excellent violinist.
To avoid the Russian Revolution, Heifetz and his family left Russia in 1917, traveling by rail to the Russian far east and then by ship to the United States, arriving in San Francisco. On October 27, 1917, Heifetz played for the first time in the United States, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and became an immediate sensation. Fellow violinist Mischa Elman in the audience asked "Do you think it's hot in here?", whereupon the pianist Leopold Godowsky, in the next seat, replied, "Not for pianists."
In 1917, Heifetz was elected an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. At 16, he was perhaps the youngest person ever elected to membership in the organization. Heifetz remained in the country and became a United States citizen in 1925. A story circulates that tells of an interaction with one of the Marx Brothers: when he told the brother (usually Groucho or Harpo) that he had been earning his living as a musician since the age of seven, he received the reply, "Before that, I suppose, you were just a bum."
On April 17, 1926, Heifetz performed at Ein Harod, then the center of Mandatory Palestine's kibbutz movement.
In May 1945, Heifetz played with his son for Ivan Konev and Omar Bradley in Kassel.
In 1954, Heifetz began working with pianist Brooks Smith, who was his accompanist for many years until he changed to Ayke Agus as his accompanist in retirement. He was also accompanied in concert for more than 20 years by Emanuel Bay, another immigrant from Russia and a personal friend. Bay facilitated the commission of Miklós Rózsa's Violin Concerto, which Heifetz premiered in 1956. Heifetz's musicianship was such that he would demonstrate to his accompanist how he wanted passages to sound on the piano, and would even suggest which fingerings to use.
After the seasons of 1955–56, Heifetz announced that he would sharply curtail his concert activity, saying, "I have been playing for a very long time." In 1958, he tripped in his kitchen and fractured his right hip, resulting in hospitalization at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and a near fatal staphylococcus infection. He was invited to play Beethoven at the United Nations General Assembly and entered leaning on a cane. By 1967, Heifetz had considerably curtailed his concert performances.
Heifetz was "regarded as the greatest violin virtuoso since Paganini", wrote Lois Timnick of the Los Angeles Times. "He set all standards for 20th-century violin playing [...] everything about him conspired to create a sense of awe", wrote music critic Harold Schonberg of The New York Times. "The goals he set still remain, and for violinists today it's rather depressing that they may never really be attained again", wrote violinist Itzhak Perlman.
Virgil Thomson described Heifetz as being the master of playing "silk underwear music", a characterization he did not intend as a compliment. Other critics argue that he infused his playing with feeling and reverence for the composer's intentions. His style of playing was highly influential in defining the way modern violinists approached the instrument. His use of rapid vibrato, emotionally charged portamento, fast tempi, and superb bow control coalesced to create a highly distinctive sound that makes Heifetz's playing instantly recognizable to aficionados. Itzhak Perlman, who himself is known for his rich warm tone and expressive use of portamento, described Heifetz's tone as like "a tornado" because of its emotional intensity. Perlman said that Heifetz preferred to record relatively close to the microphone—and as a result, one would perceive a somewhat different tone quality when listening to Heifetz during a concert hall performance.
Heifetz was very particular about his choice of strings. He used a silver-wound Tricolore gut G string, plain unvarnished gut D and A strings, and a Goldbrokat medium steel E string, and employed clear Hill-brand rosin sparingly. Heifetz believed that playing on gut strings was important in rendering an individual sound.