Violinist Jascha Heifetz was born on 20 January, 1901, and his father, Reuven Heifetz, was a local violin teacher and served as the concertmaster of the Vilnius Theatre Orchestra for one season before the theatre closed down.
While Jascha was an infant, his father did a series of tests, observing how his son responded to his fiddling. This convinced him that Jascha had great potential, and before Jascha was two years old, his father bought him a small violin, and taught him bowing and simple fingering.
At five years old, he started lessons with Leopold Auer. He was a child prodigy, making his public debut at seven, in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania) playing the Violin Concerto in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn. In 1910 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatoryto study under Auer.
The sense that I derived from my own research is that Mr. Heiftz was a serious person, and took music making as a no nonsense profession. On rare occasions there would be some unexpected humor with his students. At all other times, the atmosphere with students was formal, respectful, and only the performance results were of any interest to him.
Heifetz was interested in Tennis, and he liked automobiles. He was able to acquire an electric car well before these vehicles were a commercial reality. Heifetz died on the 10th of December, 1987.
Here is Jascha Heifetz in the Violin Concerto by Peter Tchaikovsky:
