Jascha Heifetz, universally acclaimed as the greatest violinist of this century, died late Thursday night in Los Angeles, of complications resulting from a fall. He was 86.
Heifetz, who performed concerts throughout the world until age 73, was best known for his technical mastery of the violin, the elegance and fine detail of his playing, his insistence on perfection and his disinterest in publicity. He was once quoted as saying that there was nothing to write about his life other than the dates of his birth and premier performances.
Born to Annie and Ruvin Heifetz in Vilna, Russia in 1901, Heifetz had his first violin lesson at the age of 3 from his father, himself a violinist in a local theater. Before he was 7, he made his debut in Kovno.
By the age of 11, Heifetz had already been named one of the world’s greatest violinists by conductor Artur Nikisch.
Legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler said of Heifetz: “When I hear that boy I want to throw away my fiddle.”
Years later, a music critic for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot deseribed Heifetz as “the king of violinists and the violinist of kings.”
In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution and heightened persecution of Jews, Heifetz left Russia and settled in the United States. He made his American debut at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 27 of that year — an event one critic called a “turning point in the musical history of the country.”
Heifetz first visited Palestine in 1926 and donated funds at the time to build a Jewish music conservatory there. The Jascha Heifetz Hall was later built in Tel Aviv, the only music hall in the world to bear his name.
When he returned to Israel in 1953, Heifetz created an uproar by performing a sonata by Richard Strauss, whose music to this day is banned in Israel because of the composer’s expressed allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi regime.
After playing the sonata at a concert in Haifa, Heifetz received threats from Herut activists and members of Betar, the Herut youth movement, warning him not to perform the controversial work. But saying that he would rather not play at all than submit to censorship, he continued to perform the piece at subsequent concerts.
During one such performance in Jerusalem, a group took over the concert hall and shut off all the lights, disrupting the concert for 10 minutes.
Afterward, as Heifetz was making his way from the King David Hotel to his car, a man walked up to him and beat him with a crowbar. The violinist’s arm was slightly injured in the attack.
After the incidents in Jerusalem, David Ben-Gurion, who was prime minister at the time, sent a telegram of sympathy to Heifetz, saying that he would attend the violinist’s final recital in Tel Aviv. At that concert, Heifetz omitted the Strauss sonata.
Heifetz spent the last decade of his life as a virtual recluse in Los Angeles, where he devoted all his professional time to teaching. From 1964 to 1982, he served on the faculty of the University of California School of Music, where he had an endowed chair.
Heifetz was married twice, first to Hollywood star Florence Vidor, whom he divorced in 1945, and then to Frances Spiegelberg, whom he married one year later and divorced in 1963. He is survived by a son from that marriage, Joseph, 39, and by two children from his first marriage, Josepha, 56, and Robert, 54.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
