Her Public Look at a Private Man

Jascha Heifetz presents a frustrating challenge to would-be biographers. Although one of the most widely celebrated and recorded musicians of the 20th century, he was also intensely private, not to say secretive and even paranoid. The violinist bowed out of public life at the top of his form, with a final concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1972, and spent the remaining 15 years of his life in growing isolation at his Los Angeles home.

For that period, his most constant companion, personal and class accompanist, advisor and general household factotum was Ayke Agus. It took 10 years, but Agus, a respected freelance violinist and pianist in Los Angeles, has finally provided a close look at this formidable man and his approach to music. “Heifetz as I Knew Him” (Amadeus Press, $24.95) is her sympathetic and sensitive, but unsparing memoir.

“After he had passed away, I realized he was a basically misunderstood person,” Agus says. “Most people came away with not very illuminating and positive impressions. The first time I met him, I was so surprised. He was the most humble, shy and unpretentious man. I never understood why people felt he was so intimidating or antagonistic.

“That is really why I decided that I was going to try--in my own limited way, English not being my first language--to present the Heifetz I knew.”

Besides, this was something of a mission he assigned to her. In her book, Agus describes how once after Heifetz had related a long personal anecdote, he told her: “Now, you make sure that you do not forget to put all this in the book you are going to write after I am dead and gone.”

The results of this “limited” effort are remarkably revealing of both author and subject, well organized and clearly written. Originally issued to coincide with the centenary of Heifetz’s birth on Feb. 2, 1901, “Heifetz as I Knew Him” has already had a second printing, and has been highly praised in music and general news publications.

“While this is a memoir, rather than a full-fledged biography, Agus has brought us the sad, vivid story of a solitary genius who came, played and conquered, again and again--and then went home alone,” Tim Page wrote in the Washington Post.

According to Joanna Pieters in Strad, the periodical bible of string playing: “Her stories are by turn comic, perceptive and pitiful--but however extreme they become, Heifetz never loses his dignity, nor she her respect for him.”

Support for the book has also come from a less conventional source, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. This is not as surprising as it may seem, considering that Farrakhan was something of a violin prodigy. In 1946, when he was 12 years old, he won a competition in Boston. The prize was tickets to hear Heifetz play the Beethoven Concerto with the Boston Symphony, and that performance made an indelible impression.

Heifetz has remained something of a hero for Farrakhan, who sent an unsolicited fan letter to Agus’ publisher, Amadeus Press. Farrakhan has read the book five times and can quote large parts of it from memory, Agus says. He has resumed violin lessons after years away from the instrument, and he is scheduled to open the Nation of Islam’s World Savior Day conference, here in Los Angeles in February, with a performance of the Beethoven Concerto at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

She has been coaching him on the work, and she says that he is both capable and committed. She is keenly aware that Farrakhan is a highly controversial figure, particularly when it comes to anti-Semitism, but she also notes Heifetz’s contention that music should not be constrained by religious or political partisanship.

“Music is supposed to be a universal element for healing,” Agus says. “Music is supposed to propagate love, not hated.” That, she says, is how they are approaching the work.

Heifetz was no stranger to similar controversy, particularly for his championship of the violin sonata by Richard Strauss, a composer often considered a Nazi sympathizer. Although warned not to, the Jewish violinist played the piece twice when he toured Israel in 1953. After a performance in Jerusalem, a man tried to smash Heifetz’s hand with an iron bar. The violinist was able to protect himself from serious injury, although he bore a scar on his right forearm that was still visible 30 years later.

Born in Indonesia of Chinese ancestry, Agus grew up listening to the Heifetz recordings beloved by her mother. She studied violin and piano, and Heifetz became sort of a mythical hero for her. A scholarship from missionary nuns sent her to a small college in upstate New York, with summers at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. There, a chance remark in 1971 when she had just turned 20 revealed that Heifetz was not simply a figure out of legend, but still alive and teaching at USC.

That fall she went to California to audition for a place in Heifetz’s master class. Despite what she says about this essentially shy man, she found him intimidating at that audition and was convinced she would never study with him. Yet when the call came offering her a spot in the class, she had to make the move.

Heifetz came to exercise more and more control over her life. He switched her from violin student to class accompanist, and expanded that position to include more and more of his personal errands.

After USC closed the master class in 1981, Heifetz kept Agus on his payroll as private accompanist and household manager. It had never been easy to be Heifetz’s friend, and as his personal demons closed in, he subjected Agus to increasing mental abuse, culminating in accusations that she was trying to poison him.

“I was raised to overcome challenges,” she says, “and he was one challenge after another. For that reason, I never quit.”

Agus didn’t start her public career until after Heifetz’s death in 1987. “It was very difficult,” she says, “Like coming into a new town as a freelancer. Nobody knew me.”

Getting her book published was another long-running challenge. In the years immediately after Heifetz’s death, she concentrated on getting his unpublished music transcriptions ready, including his version of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” for the violin. She had to finish it herself, having played through it with him countless times.

She began work on the book in 1990, writing it out in longhand and getting computer help from her ex-husband.

The manuscript made the rounds of at least 10 American publishers without finding any interest. Finally an editor at Oxford University Press expressed interest but said he needed to get it approved by the New York office, where it remained for another four years.

Eventually, that Oxford editor gave her several contacts with other publishers, and she found a home for her manuscript at Amadeus. At that time, however, it was essentially an objective narrative, with little of her in it. Eve Goodman, the editor at Amadeus, encouraged her to rewrite the book, showing her interaction with Heifetz.

“That was harder than writing the book in the beginning. I constantly had to think whether to include some story. There are no names, because I thought I should protect myself,” Agus says, echoing the Heifetz dictum she gives in the book: “Don’t write anything down, because once it’s written, it could be held against you.”

“I think I have a better understanding about myself” as a result of writing the book, Agus says now. “I had no time to think about myself when I was working for him.”

It was not all work and no play. Until his death, Heifetz maintained a rigorous schedule that included several hours of practice every day.

“His mood didn’t matter, how he felt about me at the time didn’t matter. When time came to make music, he became a completely different person, so professional, so focused.”

After Heifetz’s death, Agus recorded a disc of Heifetz’s transcriptions with violinist Sherry Kloss, Heifetz’s last teaching assistant, who also has published a memoir. Agus also recorded Heifetz’s arrangements for solo piano and then, thanks to the digital magic of the Yamaha Disklavier, the Heifetz encores, again with her playing both piano and violin parts.

Teaching was a mission that Heifetz took seriously, and so does Agus. She plays in local orchestras such as the Pasadena Symphony and the California Philharmonic, but it is master classes in the art of collaboration that mean the most to her.

Heifetz, himself an accomplished pianist, always knew every note of the piano parts to the pieces he performed, and considered the integrity and artistry of duo collaboration--never merely accompaniment--essential.

“My aspiration is to teach and to share what has been passed on by him in the art of collaboration,” Agus says. “I’ve been performing since I was 7. What I really want to do now is teach others.”

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John Henken is a regular contributor to Calendar.