The Heifetz Collection, Volume 19 - 51 MINIATURES: 1944-1946

Heifetz's Decca Records by John and John Anthony Maltese Heifetz's brief stint in the Decca studios (1944-46) marked the only time between 1917 and 1972 that he was not under exclusive contract to RCA Victor. During the early 1940s record companies in the United States experienced severe strains. The war caused major shortages in the shellac used to make discs and forced a halt in the production of phonographs. Even worse, the powerful American Federation of Musicians union (AFofM), led by James Caesar Petrillo, imposed a ban on all recordings starting in August 1942. Petrillo felt that the use of recorded music in jukeboxes sidelined thousands of musicians who would otherwise have been hired to perform live music, so the AFofM—to benefit unemployed musicians—demanded that record companies pay a royalty on every disc sold. The companies refused, and the union responded by imposing the recording ban. The labels began releasing stockpiles of unissued performances in an attempt to hold out against the union. RCA and Columbia, with strong classical-music divisions, were fairly successful at this, but Decca, which produced mostly popular music, was devastated. Who wanted to buy last year's hits when new tunes were all the rage? So Decca, paying the royalties, settled with the union in September 1943 and immediately resumed recording, while RCA and Columbia held out for another year. In the fall of 1944 Decca invited Heifetz to record. Unlike most classical musicians, Heifetz was a household name. Convinced that his recordings of encore selections would be sure hits, the company's representatives gave Heifetz a blank check, saying, "You fill in the amount. Just record for us." Heifetz agreed. He could have waited rather than leave RCA, which was then on the verge of settling with the union. (In fact, RCA was recording again by November 1944.) But the Decca offer came at a time when Heifetz was miffed with his old recording company, so he signed. His first sessions took place at a studio in mid-Manhattan in October 1944. Eager for the records to be issued in time for Christmas sales, Decca persuaded Heifetz to record his own version of White Christmas with orchestra. Milton Kaye, an outstanding young pianist, was his accompanist for the rest of the selections. Kaye's association with Heifetz had begun that summer when they toured Italy and North Africa for the U.S.O. Together they gave four 50-minute recitals a day for Allied troops, playing in stifling heat on battlefields, in hospitals and even on a makeshift stage at a racetrack. Artillery fire occasionally served as counterpoint to their music. But the concert that stands out in Kaye's memory was one they gave for a group of soldiers who had lost arms and legs. "He played the same program he usually did," Kaye recalled, "the Bach E Major Prelude, the Saint-Saëns Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and a group of short pieces ending with the Hora Staccato. He always ended with the Hora Staccato. And I tell you, he played twice as brilliantly as he ever played before. He just felt that it was especially important."* Heifetz and Kaye traveled from concert to concert by jeep—certainly not the most comfortable form of transportation. Heifetz wouldn't eat until the end of the day; then he had dinner, one drink, and would relax playing Ping-Pong. "He always beat me," said Kaye. "One time I almost beat him, and he got mad! He also liked to hear me play jazz. He played a little jazz, too. His talent for the piano was beautiful—same as for the violin. He had that absolute ease of approach. It was a lesson being close to a great artist like that—a lesson one never forgets. " Even playing for the troops, Heifetz was ever the perfectionist. "He would scold me for not wearing my military pins neatly enough on my uniform," Kaye remembered with a laugh. But Heifetz always told him, "I treat myself much more demandingly than I treat you. " During one concert, Kaye—who was sick—started the piano introduction to the Wilhelmj arrangement of Schubert's Ave Maria too slowly. "Ifyou start that introduction too slowly," saidKaye, "nobody's bow is going to be long enough to pull out those opening notes on the violin. So when Heifetz came in, he smashed his bow down on the strings so hard that it scared me. Of course, when he did that I knew something was wrong. When we finished I was almost in tears." Afterward, Kaye apologized. '"You have an obligation to the music'," Heifetz responded. '"Never make a mistake. Never'!" But Heifetz also praised Kaye when he felt he had done well. At a concert for thousands of servicemen at the Rome Opera House about a week later, they opened with a Mozart sonata. At the end of the piece, during the applause, Heifetz walked over to Kaye, who thought, "Oh, my God, here it goes again!" But Heifetz bent over and said affectionately, "Tonight you are the artist. " Kaye was so touched he could hardly go on. "He was really a dear man," said Kaye with genuine admiration. "Playing for him was certainly one of the greatest experiences, musically, of my life." Back in New York after the U.S.O. tour, Heifetz asked Kaye to accompany him for the Decca recordings. Kaye readily agreed, and Heifetz sent him a stack of music. Almost all of it was new to Kaye—pieces they had never performed before. They recorded most of the selections in one take. "When we did do it twice, or in a few cases three times, it had to do with the balance or something of the quality of the recording that he didn't like," recalled Kaye. At the end of the last day of recording, Heifetz realized they were short one side. He took out a copy of Leopold Godowsky's Wienerisch (Viennese) and handed it to Kaye. Kaye had never seen it before, and it has an extremely difficult piano part. He looked at the music, then at Heifetz and said, "I can't do this." "Heifetz justturnedicy cold," Kaye remembered. "He said, 'If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't ask you. Now get down there and do it! ' Well, by golly, we went through it once, and there were some things he corrected, and then we recorded it in one take. That was it! I don't know how I did it to this day. " Decca issued all of the pieces that Heifetz and Kaye recorded. Heifetz recorded another set of short compositions, including his own transcriptions of selections from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, in 1945-46 with his longtime accompanist Emanuel Bay. His final session was in July 1946, when he recorded two violin obbligatos with the crooner Bing Crosby. By then Heifetz had already re-signed with RCA and had begun recording again for that label. Heifetz's Decca recordings remained continuously in the company's catalog for nearly 30 years. Later, this proved to be something of a problem for RCA. A clause in Heifetz's contract with Decca said that he could not remake any of the selections he had recorded for Decca so long as those titles remained in its catalog. As a result, many of the performances heard on this set are Heifetz's only recordings of the pieces. When he wanted to make stereo versions of his Gershwin transcriptions in 1965, RCA had to negotiate a contract with Decca. Years after they were made, the Decca recordings stand the test of time. They are the only commercial examples of Heifetz's wartime playing, and they capture his artistry in, as Itzhak Perlman puts it, "God's tone." *Comments by Milton Kaye are drawn from the authors' interview with Mr. Kaye on December 20, 1993. John Maltese is a retired Professor of Music at Jacksonville State University, Alabama; John Anthony Maltese is on the Political Science faculty of the University of Georgia. Both are longtime noted authorities on Heifetz and his recordings.