Jascha Heifetz

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 married twice. His first wife was silent film actress Florence Vidor, the ex-wife of film director King Vidor. Florence was 33 and Jascha was 27 when they married in August 1928, with the Jewish media commenting that she was a Christian from Texas marrying a Russian Jew. Florence brought her nine-year-old daughter, Suzanne Vidor, into the marriage. The union produced one daughter, Josefa Heifetz, born in 1930, and one son named Robert Joseph Heifetz, born in 1932. Jascha Heifetz filed for divorce at the end of 1945 in Santa Ana, California.

Heifetz married a second time, wedding Frances Spiegelberg (1911–2000) in January 1947 in Beverly Hills. Frances was a society lady from New York who also had a previous marriage with two children, ending in divorce. Their son Joseph "Jay" Heifetz was born in September 1948 in Los Angeles. Heifetz divorced her in 1963, with temporary alimony ordered by the court in January, and the divorce finalized in December.

Heifetz enjoyed sailing off the coast of Southern California and was a stamp collector. He played tennis and ping-pong and amassed a personal library of books.