Lea and Billy Wolf #1 - Heifetz Plays with Billy by Thomas Wolf

When my father, Billy Wolf, married into my mother’s family – that was always the way it was described…not that she married into his – Dad knew nothing about classical music.  He decided that the best way to learn was to take up an instrument.  He could think of no one better to consult than his mother-in-law.  After all, Lea Luboshutz was a famous musician so she should be full of good advice.

In fact, Lea was probably a poor choice for the kind of guidance he needed.  She had virtually no experience with beginners and she herself had been three years old when she began to play the violin.  Nevertheless, Lea was never shy about giving advice…to anyone on any subject.  She discouraged Billy from taking up a string instrument or piano (they were “family instruments” reserved for professionals).  She explained that at his age those instruments would be too difficult for him to learn. Rather, my grandmother suggested he try the flute.

My hunch is that Lea regarded the flute as somewhat civilized (as compared to a trumpet or trombone, for example) – wrong notes would not be quite as excruciating to bear. She directed him to William Kincaid, her fellow Curtis Institute of Music faculty member and the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Kincaid suggested that early instruction could begin with one of his students at the Curtis Institute.  Dad’s first teacher was a young woman who often turned to him for marital advice. When Dad opined that one of her boyfriends was unsuitable and it turned out that she was already engaged to the young man, a change in teachers seemed the best course of action.  Dad’s next teacher was Burnett Atkinson, an infinitely patient contemporary, who later would join the Philadelphia Orchestra.

One very sensible thing Dad had done at the outset was to ask Kincaid what was the best possible flute he could buy. Kincaid suggested that Dad go to Boston and meet with a flute maker there named Verne Q. Powell.  The result was a magnificent Powell flute (#399) that is still in my possession.  It was the instrument on which Dad struggled to play until he finally gave the instrument to me a quarter century later.

Dad’s progress was slow, but he did manage to play for a season in a local amateur orchestra (the Old York Road Symphony) for which no audition was required. Though this was well before I was born, I shudder to imagine what the group must have sounded like if Dad was in the flute section.  He appeared at a concert with the group on December 12, 1944, and kept the program to be part of an archive consisting of many of Lea’s Carnegie Hall programs.  But soon Lea was discouraging Dad from playing outside the home and she managed to put the final kibosh on his performances by declaring publicly in the press that he was “an incorrigible amateur.” The article went on to say: “Of his [Billy Wolf’s] repertory, Madame remarked with a twinkle, ‘It is small and bad. It is only ‘Happy Birthday to You.’”[1] He had inaugurated this tradition on his daughter Alexandra’s first birthday with a photograph that is also documented in the family archive.

But Lea’s description of Dad’s limited repertoire was not entirely fair.  He had also been playing some popular tunes he was hearing from symphonies and operas.  Many had been arranged by distinguished musicians of the day for beginners.  On one occasion, when Dad learned that the violinist Jascha Heifetz would be visiting the family home in Philadelphia, he became particularly excited.  He had been practicing one of these Heifetz arrangements and, without telling anyone in the family, he started scheming about how he might play the work with the great man himself.  As Heifetz came into the living room of my parent’s house to have a drink before dinner, he walked by the piano and saw his arrangement open on the music rack and Dad’s flute lying on the piano.  “Oh I see someone is playing one of my little pieces.”

Dad immediately answered that it was he and somehow managed to get Heifetz, who played piano in addition to violin, to accompany him, much to the chagrin of my grandmother and mother.  The piece began slowly and Dad struggled through, playing most of the notes.  Then the piano moved to a fast tempo, playing a short introduction before the flute comes in again. Heifetz began the lively section.

“Wait,” said Dad, “That’s too fast.”

“What do you mean?” said Heifetz.  “It is marked ‘Presto.’ That’s the way it goes.”

“Not if you want to play it with me,” said Dad. 

Given Heifetz’s fame and legendary lack of a sense of humor, it was a story that made the rounds of the music world for years, much to Lea’s horror. Dad would do everything he could to promote it, including a particularly audacious move that no one in the family could quite believe.  On a business trip to Cleveland, Dad took his flute and played at a social gathering, asking his brother-in-law Boris Goldovsky, who was living and teaching there at the time, to accompany him.  A newspaper reporter happened to be at the gathering and at Dad’s prodding, wrote up the little concert, ending the article with the line: “Mr. Wolf was recently honored in Philadelphia when Mr. Jascha Heifetz accompanied him.”[2]  Who said Dad’s playing couldn’t make it into the press?

NOTE: A version of the Heifetz story appears in my memoir Musical Gifts: How a Maine Fishing Village Became a Center for Great Music. To order a signed copy, please click here.

[1] Philadelphia Inquirer, February 24, 1955.

[2] Social Column in “The Jewish Review and Observer,” Cleveland Ohio, March 10, 1939, page 2.