This post was written by Tom Brinkmoeller.
Tom Brinkmoeller wrote about broadcasting for The Cincinnati
Enquirer in the '70s and '80s and has continued to do so whenever he's had the
opportunity. He writes about public television in his "Public
Decency" blog https://publicdecency.wordpress.com .
Speaking from experience, it's not often that a critic of any sort
can cause even a tremor. Forget moving a mountain. Yet, in the case of one of
the most gifted musicians in modern history, it was a bad review that turned
not just the head, but the entire life of Jascha Heifetz from a young man who
was learning to play like a boy to a virtuoso whose skills almost surely will
be admired many years.
PBS' always-excellent "American Masters" series does a
fine job of profiling a gifted and very complex man in the upcoming
"Jascha Heifetz: God's Fiddler."
(The hour-long special will be shown on: WCET April 17 at 9 p.m.;
CET Arts April 19 at 9 p.m.; WPTD, Think TV 16, April 19 at 4 p.m.; KET2 April
17 and 18 at 2 a.m., April 19 at 4 a.m. and April 22 at 8 p.m.; KET April 23 at
3 a.m. and April 26 at 2 p.m.)
Heifetz was born in 1901 in a small Lithuanian town, then part of
Russia. He died in 1987, a Californian with homes in Malibu and Beverly Hills.
His career was golden. In addition to his super stardom as a violinist, his
Hollywood existence landed him in a movie, led him to write a Bing Crosby hit
and brought him to a first marriage, with a movie star. Because the program is
told from Heifetz/s writings and from recollections of those who knew him, the
materials' provenance is near-flawless. So much detail about this huge talent
is packed into a relatively small hour, yet one leaves with a clear idea of and
new respect for such a singular musical genius.
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Jascha Heifetz, the
child prodigy, circa 1907 at age 6. Credit: Library of Congress
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He played in public for the first time at the age of 5; four years
later, he was admitted to a prestigious conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia,
where only the intervention of Leopold Auer, a Russian musical giant at the
time, kept him from being barred because of his Jewish heritage; at 11 he
played his first solo concert, and after building a reputation throughout
Russia and Europe by the time he reached 17, he left for what was supposed to
be a four-month tour of the United States. The overthrow of the Russian
monarchy turned that into a much longer stay and, eventually, U.S. citizenship.
He was an immediate celebrity, and as more of America discovered
him, he had -- for him -- unprecedented fun as he discovered a life that was
far better than the one he had left in Russia.
"After I came to America, my one aim, it seems, was to enjoy
myself," he wrote. "I had to wait until I was a young man before I
could act like a child."
The end to that spree came when W.J. Henderson, a respected New
York music critic, wrote in a scathing review of a Heifetz performance that he
seemed "content to stand still" and not progress his art.
"Nothing had prepared me for a bad review," Heifetz
wrote.
An associate from later in his life tells how Heifetz considered
suicide. Instead of ending his life, he changed it radically, returning to
serious practice and rehearsal again. He never turned his eyes from that
intense discipline for the remainder of his professional life.
The change spilled over into almost all parts of his life. His
second marriage ended as unsuccessfully as the first. His decades-long lawyer
said of the children from those marriages, "He didn't care for any one of
the three of them."
Heifetz taught master classes at the University of Southern
California. Some students were unable to take the master's stern nature and
abandoned the course. Those who stayed experienced a "tense"
unbalance between his demeanor out of the teaching environment and the strict
formality within. His performances were labeled by some as impassive and cold.
It's pointed out that very few people were allowed to call him by his first
name; "Mr. H" was the more common appellation. Reversing his earlier
love for celebrity, he traveled under the name Jim Hoyl. It was the same
pseudonym he used as the composer of the Crosby recording -- “When You
Make Love To Me (Don’t Make Believe”).
It appears all the adulation made him incredibly complex. When he
was still a child, his Russian benefactor, Auer, announced, "He's not my
student. He's a student of God."
The continuing overawed reaction of Itzhak Perlman to encounters
with Heifetz sums up how this most-serious man was almost religiously respected
by those he touched:
"I can't believe I'm actually talking to God!"
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Jascha Heifetz, circa
1969-1970. Credit: RCA
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