Jascha Heifetz

Artist note by Richard Evidon

Jascha Heifetz was hailed as “the greatest violin virtuoso since Paganini”, yet he only visited the Schubert Club once, at the very beginning of his career. Heifetz’s recordings are still touchstones for technical perfection. He was also among those famous classical artists who appeared in Hollywood movies. Here are two excerpts from his big-screen appearances. The first is from the 1947 film Carnegie Hall, in which Heifetz plays a cut version of the Tchaikovsky Concerto’s first movement, with Fritz Reiner conducting the New York Philharmonic:

In the 1951 movie Of Men and Music, Heifetz plays the 24th Paganini Caprice (in Schumann’s arrangement for violin and piano), accompanied by his regular pianist, Emanuel Bay:

Heifetz was a master of the virtuoso showpiece, “crossover” repertoire and encore pieces, often in his own dazzling arrangements that displayed his incomparable dexterity and sensuous tone. Between 1943 and 1946 he made a wonderful series of discs for American Decca, including his own arrangement of selections from Porgy and Bess: