Picture the most austere classical violinist of the 20th century driving a converted electric Renault through Los Angeles in 1967 wearing a gas mask to protest smog. This episode maps the life of Jascha Heifetz, from his father testing his reactions to chords as an infant in Vilna, through Leopold Auer’s brutally disciplined class at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, to a Carnegie Hall debut in October 1917 that left rival musicians sweating.

The conversation examines the mechanics behind his sound, including gut strings, a rapid nervous vibrato, and intense portamento, and why some critics dismissed it as silk underwear music while Itzhak Perlman called it an emotional tornado. It also covers his struggles to share the spotlight in the Million Dollar Trio, a pop song written for Bing Crosby under the alias Jim Hoyle, the 1953 Israel tour where he refused to drop a Richard Strauss sonata and was attacked with a crowbar, and the injuries that ended his concert career in 1972.

• Auer’s philosophy of the performer as a clear pane of glass with no visible struggle
• The 12-year-old in Berlin who made Fritz Kreisler suggest the masters break their fiddles
• Why Heifetz dictated fingerings to world-class pianists and overwhelmed his collaborators
• Fighting for the 911 emergency number and clean air with the same precision he brought to scales
• A 1742 Guarneri left to a San Francisco museum with strict rules on who may play it