2021-02-02T14:48:00+00:00
The Carnegie Hall recital sealed the 16-year-old’s reputation as an astonishing and unruffled performer, set a new bar for violin playing and led to a season full of engagements and a recording contract, as Dario Sarlo reveals in this piece from The Strad’s archive
The following is an extract from The Strad’s November 2017 issue cover story – to read the full article download the issue on desktop computer or via the The Strad App, or buy the print edition
It all happened in New York 100 years ago, on 27 October 1917. On what began as a typical Saturday afternoon, an excited crowd of curious musicians and locals descended on Carnegie Hall to hear the latest virtuoso from Russia, a 16-year-old named Jascha Heifetz, the most recent in a stream of prodigies to emerge from the class of Professor Leopold Auer in Petrograd (now St Petersburg). Details of his remarkable talent had been widely reported by the American press as he and his family trav