I just read a brief life history of Jascha Heifetz, the God of the Violin. He was, and everybody knows it. Like Caruso on Strings. Everybody knows that too, he’s The One. I know, I know, there can be cavils, quibbles, and parallels are not exact (no need to mention that parallels never intersect, at least not in this universe where we live, unless…). But I was talking about Heifetz, and the stuff I never knew, how on a concert tour of Israel he played the Sonata by Richard Strauss, didn’t heed the government ban because Strauss had been a Nazi supporter just a few years earlier. And a man came up to Heifetz and bludgeoned him with a metal pipe, hurt his shoulder, almost crushed his hand, hit the violin case which partially deflected the blow. And the Official Government which had imposed the ban tried to juggle its position with world report because wherever Heifetz went the world followed him and everybody loved him. And they tried to let the assailant argue that he was only trying to smash the violin. And Heifetz with his hand bandaged wouldn’t quit the tour, finally compromised a bit by keeping the Strauss Sonata listed on the program, but omitted in performance. And how this incident may have been in some ways the beginning of the end, though it took decades, and he like the miracle he was, could adjust, for example, take an out of tune violin and by subtle manipulation make his fingers find that perfect perfection and no one noticed. But later in his life his shoulder hurt, his right arm wasn’t quite, he had to have someone lift that arm for him while he tilted the violin to accommodate and he somehow could still play at the level he never compromised.

I never knew any of that.

And I heard Heifetz play. Live, in person. Treasured memories. At the Hollywood Bowl. Filled to capacity, overflow standing at the back, even sitting on the wall, up the hill behind, because nobody wanted to miss. And Leonard Bernstein on the podium conducting. And Heifetz standing to the side, his famous moveless stance, his face without outward expression, they called him the stone face, but underneath, the music. And Bernstein, doing UberLennie, waving his arms, tossing his head, bobbing up and down, like a pre-Dudamel on steroids, crying for attention – Look at me! Look at me! – and all our eyes fixed on Heifetz where the music was. These are things you don’t forget.

And I tried to pry my mind away from the pain of the current Middle East, and Israel. And my Daughter told Alexa to wake me up, “Play Das Reingold,” and I said, “The whole opera? In the morning?” And I noticed that Alexa with her Artificial Intelligence had chosen the performance with Barenboim conducting. That immediately set me off on a tangent. I wondered what criteria Alexa used to make her choices, how she could choose so well. I noticed that she followed with Quastoff singing Schubert, and then Schnabel playing Brahms. I realized she must be putting together my suggestions and requests, that she remembers and can extrapolate. Like me, I thought. Like me. And Barenboim, a good choice. There are more of them than I realize, artists of preeminence on one instrument who also conduct at the same level, like Ashkenazy, those who sit at the keyboard and accompany themselves with orchestra because they have two hands and can use them both.

And violinists too, Yehudi Menuhin, famous for being one of the child prodigies who made the transition, and better than, because he was the active humanitarian working beyond in the real world, and then Barenboim again, because he’s doing the same, noted for it. There just aren’t enough Nobel Peace Prizes to go around to everyone who qualifies, and we still don’t have Peace.

And so many dual musician conductors, like Pinchas Zukerman, friend colleague fellow student with Itzak Perlman our current Heifetz, Zukerman who burst out in all directions to include viola, conducting for real, and second fiddle as needed.

And Leonard Bernstein again who had more than two hands, and three careers all of which he could preeminently pursue, pianist, conductor, composer, constantly trying to find the old in the new (we all remember, don’t we, how Aaron Copeland, music teacher to the world, would say to Lennie who repeated the story, looking at his manuscript, “keep these two bars, throw the rest out”). Lennie everybody loved who explained music to children and wanted so badly to write the Great American Opera, and knew that arguably it had already been done, Gershwin gave us “Porgy and Bess” as America’s “Carmen.”

And thinking still about Heifetz and violinists and teaching, I’m always thinking about teaching, how Joshua Bell studied with him and said only praise, how I had picked him out even before The Red Violin which let him show the world who he is, and thinking students, because the mind segues and you never know where it will lead, how Sondheim was the admitted acolyte to Oscar Hammerstein, and we all know and love Sondheim for being seemingly so endlessly artesian, and then suddenly, a left turn, how I think of my own students now that I have a blog and they’re finding me and telling me, and it brings me to tears of joy, it works, it’s working, yes, there’s hope.

But getting back to Nazis and Wagner. I speculate a possible dictum: We can’t blame Wagner for Hitler. He came before, never knew that Fuhrer. And just because Adolf chose him as the favorite, it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have become even if there had never been a Wagner. That I agree is true. It’s not always as simple as cause and effect. Effects have many causes. And then I think, maybe I’m partly wrong, what if Wagner in creating a preeminent Ubermensch, helped pave the way, partly responsible though he may not have known where it would lead.

And that question always so difficult, can we appreciate art for itself freed from its antecedents, set politics and convention aside? As little as I know about it, I look back to the excitement of the music world making pilgrimage to Bayreuth to see the latest Wagner had cooked up, his New Theater on display, the new and flexible responsive stage with machinery and pits that rise from the depths and flying sets that come in and whisk away, and Verdi leading the visiting pack from Italy, inspired, saying, “I should do some of that”, aware as he gave us Otello and Falstaff, and then Puccini who came overlapping and gave us everything.

And then I stop myself.

Thinking is dangerous. And apparently endless, almost unstoppable, unless…

And I get up, out of bed, turn off the radio, go into the other room, get coffee and breakfast, sit and stare at a blank screen, the Internet just waiting for me to turn it on.