Page 22 - Great Elizabethans

The amazing violinist Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York, travelled the world playing with famous orchestras and settled in Great Britain, where he set up a school for other brilliant young musicians.
OBSESSED WITH THE VIOLIN
In 1916, a Russian Jewish couple, Moshe and Marutha, arrived in New York City in the United States. While looking for somewhere to live, they met a landlady who didn’t like Jewish people. Not long after this, their first child was born. Defiantly, they named their little boy Yehudi, meaning ‘The Jew’.
From the age of three, Yehudi was obsessed with the violin. When he heard Louis Persinger, the leader of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, playing, he demanded a violin of his own. But when he was given a toy tin violin for his birthday, he threw it away, complaining that it didn’t sing! Shortly after that, he was given a real violin and began to have lessons with Louis Persinger himself. He was incredibly talented and learnt very quickly, playing his first public concert with Louis at the age of just seven.
When Yehudi was four, his sister Hephzibah was born. A year later, another sister, Yaltah, followed. Both sisters grew up to be talented pianists – and Hephzibah became Yehudi’s favourite accompanist.
GOLD STANDARD CONCERTO
Yehudi and his two sisters were never sent to school. They studied at home with their parents – who were strict teachers and insisted on a lot of learning! After Yehudi’s
first concert, lots of people wanted to hear him play, and the family travelled to many different places to allow him to perform. He went to study in Paris, France, with the
Romanian composer and violinist Georges Enesco. Yehudi became very fond of Georges and worked with him all his life.
In 1927, when Yehudi was 11, he played Beethoven’s “Violin Concerto” at the well known Carnegie Hall in New York. All of a sudden, he was famous! After that, he toured concert halls around
the world, playing music by composers like Brahms, Mozart, Bach and many others. In 1932, Yehudi, aged 16, played the English composer Edward Elgar’s “Violin Concerto” – with Elgar, aged 75, conducting! This recording is still thought of as the perfect version of this concerto, against which all other performances are judged.