Jascha Heifetz

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 134, 27 August 1927, Page 10

Jascha Heifetz

t! " ! ONE HUNDRED JEWELLED j j MINUTES OF HARMONY j ii : i A YOUTHFUL MASTER . (Written for THE SUX.) T'HREE thousand people packed into the great Town Hall, all sorts and conditions of men, women, and flappers. The air is charged with expectancy—that suppressed hum of excitement that wells up from a human hive waiting for some master mind to minister to it. I looked up at the mighty organ with its mammoth minai rets stretching from stage to roof—- . a Giants’ Causeway of harmony, and wondered why most of us cordially hate organs—and never fall out of Love with the violin. What a contrast between the two instruments—the one ; a mass of mechanism weighing countless tons, the other a slender, simple thing of 15 ounces avoirdupois—but there! should it not be troy, for so sweet jewels are scaled? To most of us the organ is a tyrant, of sound, which makes us suffer when we are held captive in a church, and cannot decently retire; but the fiddle . . . through centuries has been our sweetheart of musical instruments, always our best beloved. The violin has been ever the same since Gas Par de Salo first moulded wood into its divine shape. As Aphrodite arose perfect from the sea foam, so from Brescia and Cremona the violin was born perfect. Every other instrument nas new-fangled patents oppressing it — alone, the violin is perfect. Yes, thank God, it cannot be improved. I will tell you why we hate the organ and love the fiddle. The emotions which the organist endeavours to impress upon its keyboard have to pass through its mass of machinery, but the violinist’s emotions are in his finger tins. There is nothing between them and the sound produced. But the tyrant organ faded from our vision as Heifitz, the poet of melody, stepped upon tiie stage with his nightingale Guarnerius. Being a bit of a labouring fiddler myself, and knowing its intense difficulties, there is to my mind no argument so convincing as to inspiration within man as the miracles wrought by the great masters of the violin. And Heifetz is a miracle-maker every time he caressingly plays his violin. Think of it! Each one of the quartet of strings has limitless notes—whole tones, half tones, and fairy harmonics. No two notes on each string are the same distance apart on the fingerboard, and yet how they are showered upon us in wondrous perfection —drenched and perfumed with soul-stirring melody. And how he gathers into one whole, himself, his Guarnerius. and the soul-snelled audience. Where did this wonder boy obtain his genius? In years, as we reckon men, Heifetz is still a boy. To achieve so much whilst the springtime of youth blossoms about him is a romance. * * * For 100 jewelled minutes the air was rich with melody, then the enchantment ceased, and we were reI leased from its sweet bondage. As we wandered slowly from the crowded hall, a trinity of thoughts came to me —half questions, half memories. There visioned before my mind an inscription carved in Latin around the oldest violin I had ever seen, made in old Cremona full 300 years ago. Translated, it read: When 1 teas young, I teas Queen of the Forest; Sow I am old, I jjraise my maker. Did not this night the old Guarnerius praise its maker? I recollected when I last met Heifetz he said something that deeply impressed me: “Much as I love my violin and its art, I love humanity more, and there are times when I want to lay my fiddle down, as far as public appearances are concerned, and take up my pen instead. There are thoughts

within me I needs must write down, for what I believe to be the world’s betterment —for its happier living.” He loves humanity better than liis art! Is this the secret of the spell Heifetz puts over us? Dear Heifetz, your eloquent bow and your magic fiddle tell us more than a pen can. As I passed through the door of the Concert Chamber I locked up at the organ, with its Giants’ Causeway of pipes. It seemed to frown upon me, but it was silent, and I was glad, for I had feared that some official would have clambered up to its seat and bellowed out the National Anthem, and so rudely have slain the echoes of Heifetz's fairy melodies. HENRY HAYWARD. Auckland.