Jascha Heifetz

Galina Kopytova, Alexandra Sarlo, Dario Sarlo

Description

Winner, Best Historical Recorded Sound Research in Classical Music, 2015 ARSC Awards for Excellence

Notoriously reticent about his early years, violinist Jascha Heifetz famously reduced the story of his childhood to "Born in Russia. First lessons at 3. Debut in Russia at 7. Debut in Carnegie Hall at 17. That's all there is to say." Tracing his little-known upbringing, Jascha Heifetz: Early Years in Russia uncovers the events and experiences that shaped one of the modern era's most unique talents and enigmatic personalities. Using previously unstudied archival materials and interviews with family and friends, this biography explores Heifetz's meteoric rise in the Russian music world—from his first violin lessons with his father, to his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with the well-known pedagogue Leopold Auer, to his tours throughout Russia and Europe. Spotlighting Auer's close-knit circle of musicians, Galina Kopytova underscores the lives of artists in Russia's "Silver Age"—an explosion of artistic activity amid the rapid social and political changes of the early 20th century.

Author's Preface
Editors' Introduction
Foreign Words List
List of Abbreviations
1. Early Roots of the Heifetz Family
2. 1901-1906: Vilnius
3. 1906-1909: Music School
4. 1910: St. Petersburg Conservatory and Nalbandian
5. First Performances in St. Petersburg
6. Summer 1911: Concerts in Pavlovsk and Odessa
7. Fall 1911: In the Class of Professor Auer
8. The Beginning of 1912
9. 1912: First Trip to Germany
10. 1912: A German Tour
11. The Beginning of 1913
12. Summer-Fall 1913: Loschwitz
13. Winter 1913-1914: Bar Mitzvah
14. Spring 1914
15. Summer-Fall 1914: War
16. January-September 1915
17. The End of 1915
18. The First Half of 1916
19. The Second Half of 1916: Norway and Denmark
20. The First Half of 1917: February Revolution
21. Summer 1917: Departure for America
Appendix 1: Reviews of Jascha Heifetz's Debut at Carnegie Hall, October 27, 1917
Appendix 2: Jascha Heifetz's Repertoire in Russia
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Russie
• Music
• Strings
• Russia
• Russian
• Eastern Europe
• Musician
• Multiple signal classification
• Jewish Studies
• Individual Composer

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 13 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010896
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

JASCHA HEIFETZ
RUSSIAN MUSIC STUDIES Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Founding Editor
JASCHA HEIFETZ
Early Years in Russia

GALINA KOPYTOVA
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF Albina Starkova-Heifetz TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY Dario Sarlo Alexandra Sarlo
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
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2014 by Indiana University Press
This work appeared originally in Russian as Jascha Heifetz in Russia: From the History of the Musical Culture of the Silver Age by Galina Kopytova (Russian Institute for the History of the Arts).
2004 Kompozitor, St. Petersburg.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kopytova, G. V., author.
[Iasha Kheifets v Rossii. English]
Jascha Heifetz : early years in Russia / Galina Kopytova with the collaboration of Albina Starkova-Heifetz ; translated and edited by Dario Sarlo and Alexandra Sarlo.
pages cm. - (Russian music studies)
This work appeared originally in Russian as Jascha Heifetz in Russia : from the history of the musical culture of the Silver Age by Galina Kopytova. ? 2004 Kompozitor, St. Petersburg. -Title page verso.
The present edition in English is more than a translation of the original. With the support and approval of the author, it has been updated with new research and sources and has been adapted to an English-speaking audience -Editors introduction.
Includes bibliographical
references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01076-6 (cloth : alkaline paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01089-6 (ebook) 1. Heifetz, Jascha, 1901-1987. 2. Violinists-Biography. 3. Heifetz, Jascha, 1901-1987-Appreciation-Soviet Union. I. Starkova-Heifetz, Albina, author. II. Sarlo, Dario, editor, translator. III. Sarlo, Alexandra, editor, translator. IV. Title. V. Series: Russian music studies (Bloomington, Ind.)
ML 418. H 44 K 6713 2013
787.2092-dc23
[B]
2013034077
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Dedicated to the memory of Robert Heifetz
CONTENTS
Author s Preface
Editors Introduction
List of Abbreviations
1 Early Roots of the Heifetz Family
2 1901-1906: Vilnius
3 1906-1909: Music School
4 1910: St. Petersburg Conservatory and Nalbandian
5 First Performances in St. Petersburg
6 Summer 1911: Concerts in Pavlovsk and Odessa
7 Fall 1911: In the Class of Professor Auer
8 The Beginning of 1912
9 1912: First Trip to Germany
10 1912: A German Tour
11 The Beginning of 1913
12 Summer-Fall 1913: Loschwitz
13 Winter 1913-1914: Bar Mitzvah
14 Spring 1914
15 Summer-Fall 1914: War
l6 January-September 1915
17 The End of 1915
18 The First Half of 1916
19 The Second Half of 1916: Norway and Denmark
20 The First Half of 1917: February Revolution
21 Summer 1917: Departure for America
Appendix 1: Reviews of Jascha Heifetz s Debut at Carnegie Hall, October 27,1917
Appendix 2: Jascha Heifetz s Repertoire in Russia
Notes
Selected Sources
Index
AUTHOR S PREFACE
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. In that folder I discovered correspondence addressed 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 letters were written from Vilnius, Lithuania in the summer of 1911 and from Loschwitz, Germany, near Dresden, in the summer of 1913. A tiny but enthusiastic voice rang out from the stillness ofthe archive: Much Respected 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.
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 United States. Despite the difference in length, both periods of his life hold 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 musical studies display only a restrained interest in his American years. The fact that Heifetz emigrated from Russia to a foreign country after the 1917 February Revolution proved to be an ideological obstacle for Soviet writers. 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 Russian text dedicated entirely to Heifetz, a biographical essay 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 century later. The article, published in the 1997 encyclopedic dictionary The Russian Abroad: Golden Book of Emigration, the Encyclopedic Biographical Dictionary by Vladimir Grigoryev, gives a comprehensive account of Heifetz s career. Nevertheless, the work suffers from a large number of factual inaccuracies including incorrect dates connected with the early period of his life. Other Russian-language materials on Heifetz include translated memoirs and several magazine publications, including a 1988 article by Igor Oistrakh in Sovetskaya muzyka , entitled To the Memory of Jascha Heifetz.
English-language literature about Heifetz is more extensive and varied, but there remains no complete biographical study worthy of a musician of such stature. Artur Weschler-Vered s 1986 book, Jascha Heifetz , monitors the trajectory of Heifetz s career with an emphasis on his 1953 tour of Israel. Herbert Axelrod s book Heifetz has been published in three editions since 1976 and deserves some attention. Along with material from reviews and memoirs, the book includes numerous photographs illuminating Heifetz s life, including some from the early Russian period. Heifetz also often figures in the memoirs of musicians based in the United States, including violinists Albert Spalding and Nathan Milstein, pianists Andr Benoist and Samuel Chotzinoff, cellist Gdal Saleski, and musicologist Boris Schwarz. Others who wrote about Heifetz include Dagmar Godowsky, Samuel and Sada Applebaum, and Roger Kahn. Furthermore, several articles about Heifetz appeared in the pages of The Strad m