United States or Hong Kong ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As to six or seven hours a day, I would not have been able to stand it at all." I implied that what Mr. Heifetz said might shock thousands of aspiring young violinists for whom he pointed a moral: "Of course," his answer was, "you must not take me too literally. Please do not think because I do not favor overdoing practicing that one can do without it. I'm quite frank to say I could not myself.
To have come safely to his destination, and then to have lost out! The magnificent careless generosity of putting the wallet behind Kitty's flatirons, to be hers if he didn't pull through! Why, this fiddling derelict was a man! Stood up and fought Karlov with his bare fists; wasn't ashamed to weep over his mother's photograph; and fiddled like Heifetz. All right.
It seems not to be generally known that finger-pressure has much to do with tone-quality. The correct poise of the left hand, as conspicuously shown by Heifetz for instance, throws the extreme tips of the fingers hammerlike on the strings, and renders full pressure of the string easy.
Mature in virtuosity the modern virtuosity which goes so far beyond the mere technical mastery that once made the term a reproach though young in years, Jascha Heifetz, when one makes his acquaintance "off-stage," seems singularly modest about the great gifts which have brought him international fame.
For Jascha Heifetz, with his wonderful record of accomplishment achieved, and with triumphs still to come before him, does not believe in "all work and no play." He laughed when I put forward the theory that he worked many hours a day, perhaps as many as six or eight? "No," he said, "I do not think I could ever have made any progress if I had practiced six hours a day.
Against these rude gipsies the refined grace and Goyaesque elegance of La Argentina stand forth in high relief, La Argentina, in whose hands the castanets become as potent an instrument for our pleasure as the violin does in the fingers of Jascha Heifetz. Bilbao, too, with his thundering heels and his tauromachian gestures, bewilders our highly magnetized senses.
And when did Heifetz ever take a run like that? Up, down and the fingers hammering like thoroughbreds on a fast track. Pizzicato with the left hand and obbligato glissando! Hoopla! The fellow's showing off! And it isn't a Drdla souvenir or a vaudeville Brahms arrangement. But twenty years of practice.
It was in Berlin that the young violinist reached the turning point of his career. "I was a boy of twelve," he said, "when I heard Jascha Heifetz play for the first time. He played the Tschaikovsky concerto, and he played it wonderfully.
Heifetz made a remark which is worth repeating, and which many a music lover who is plus royaliste que le roi might do well to remember: "After all," he said, "much as I love music, I cannot help feeling that music is not the only thing in life. I really cannot imagine anything more terrible than always to hear, think and make music!
Naturally, the first and burning question in the case of so celebrated a pedagogue was: "How do you form such wonderful artists? What is the secret of your method?" "I know," said Professor Auer, "that there is a theory somewhat to the effect that I make a few magic passes with the bow by way of illustration and presto you have a Zimbalist or a Heifetz!
Word Of The Day