Who was Heifetz?

Heifetz was a violin virtuoso born in Vilna, Lithuania (February 2 1901 – December 10, 1987). Yes, he was a Litvak.

http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2006/11/growing-up-jewish-in-philadelphia.html

Heifetz is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.  In 1917, he was elected as 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. As he was aged 16 at the time, he was perhaps the youngest person ever elected to membership in the organization. Heifetz remained in the country and became an American citizen in 1925. When he told admirer Groucho Marx he had been earning his living as a musician since the age of seven, Groucho answered, "And I suppose before that you were just a bum."

Yes, Heifetz was the cream of the crop. If Heifetz had been a law school graduate he would have been one of those people who goes on to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. That's how good he was. I've always wondered: Did Heifetz know Totenberg?





An excerpt from the Busoni piano transcription of the Bach chaconne: