Born in New York on 22nd April 1916, Yehudi
Menuhin died in Berlin on 12th March 1999. Between
those dates he metamorphosed from the child of
obscure Russian immigrants into Baron Menuhin of
Stoke d’Abernon, perhaps the best-known musician in
the world and a sort of international statesman. He was
brought up initially in San Francisco and, after two
years of lessons with Siegmund Anker, began studies
with Persinger in 1923. Two years later he gave his first
full solo recital. Then, in 1926, came his New York
début, his concerto début in San Francisco and his first
trip to Europe, where he studied in Paris with Enescu
apart from two summers in Basel with Adolf Busch.
From 1931 the family, who lived off Yehudi’s earnings,
established their home near Paris, and the following
year the boy recorded Elgar’s Violin Concerto under the
composer’s direction. He started playing sonatas with
his sister Hephzibah in 1933, recorded a Mozart work
with her that September and - having made further
visits to the studios in the meantime - first appeared
with her in public at the Salle Pleyel, Paris, on 13th
October 1934. After a world tour in 1935 he took an
eighteen-month sabbatical and then entered on a
disastrous first marriage: his parents had not prepared
him for real life. Many wartime concerts and a 1945
tour of the German death camps with Benjamin Britten
were followed by a successful second marriage and a
career lived in the
limelight. In due course he took up conducting, making numerous recordings in that rôle,
and although he never had much time available for
teaching, he founded schools in England and
Switzerland. The public, nevertheless, continued to
associate him with the violin, even when he had given
up playing it, and much of Menuhin’s later life was
spent trying to reconcile his increasing musical mastery
with his diminishing control over his instrument.
For more information, please go to www.yehudimenuhin.com.
