Yehudi Menuhin
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| Yehudi Menuhin | |
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 from the film Stage Door Canteen, 1943
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| Background information | |
| Born | April 22, 1916 New York City, New York, USA |
| Died | March 12, 1999 (aged 82) Berlin, Germany |
| Genre(s) | Classical |
| Occupation(s) | Conductor, pedagogue, violinist, writer |
| Instrument(s) | Violin |
| Years active | 1923-1999 |
| Notable instrument(s) | |
| Violin Giovanni Bussetto 1680 Giovanni Grancino 1695 Guarneri filius Andrea 1703 Soil Stradivarius Prince Khevenhüller 1733 Stradivari Guarneri del Gesù 1739 Lord Wilton 1742 Guarneri del Gesù |
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Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (April 22, 1916 – March 12, 1999) was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. Though born in New York City, New York, he later became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and in 1985, of the United Kingdom.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early career
Born to Russian (Belarusian) Jewish parents, his sisters were concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty. Menuhin began violin instruction at age three under violinist Sigmund Anker. He displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Menuhin later studied under the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Louis Persinger and Adolf Busch.
[edit] World War II musician
Yehudi Menuhin performed for allied soldiers during World War II, and went with the composer Benjamin Britten to perform for inmates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after its liberation in April 1945. He returned to Germany in 1947 to perform under the baton of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler as an act of reconciliation, becoming the first Jewish musician to do so following the Holocaust. After building early success on richly romantic and tonally opulent performances, he experienced considerable physical and artistic difficulties caused by overwork during World War II as well as unfocused and unstructured early training. Careful practice and study combined with meditation and yoga (the latter he mostly learned from B.K.S. Iyengar) helped him overcome many of these problems. His profound and considered musical interpretations are nearly universally acclaimed. When he finally started recording, he was known for practicing by deconstructing music phrases one note at a time.
Menuhin continued to perform to an advanced age, becoming known for profound interpretations of an austere quality, as well as for his explorations of music outside the classical realm.
[edit] World interactions
Menuhin credited the German-Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner with providing him with "a theoretical framework within which I could fit the events and experiences of life" (Conversations with Menuhin: 32-34).
In 1952, Menuhin met and befriended the influential yogi B.K.S. Iyengar before he had come to prominence outside India. Menuhin arranged for Iyengar to teach abroad in London, Switzerland, Paris and elsewhere. This was the first time that many Westerners had been exposed to yoga.
Menuhin made several recordings with the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, who had been criticized for conducting in Germany during the Nazi era. Menuhin defended Furtwangler, noting that the conductor had helped a number of Jewish musicians to flee Nazi Germany.
In 1962 he established the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey. He also established the music program at the Nueva School in Hillsborough, California sometime around then. In 1965 he received an honorary knighthood. In the same year, Australian composer Malcolm Williamson wrote a concerto for Menuhin. A deeply spiritual and profoundly moving work, he performed the concerto many times and recorded it at its première at the Bath Festival in 1965.
In 1997 Yehudi, along with Ian Stoutzker founded the charity Live Music Now, the largest outreach music project in the UK. LMN pays and trains professional musicians to work in the community bringing joy and comfort to those who rarely get an opportunity to hear or see live music performance.
Menuhin's pupils included Nigel Kennedy, Hungarian violist Csaba Erdelyi and violist Paul Coletti. Arguably the most famous of Menuhin's violins is the Lord Wilton Guarneri del Gesù made in 1742.
In the 1980s Menuhin wrote and oversaw the creation of a "Music Guides" series of books; each covered musical instruments with one on the human voice. Menuhin wrote some whilst others were edited by different authors.
[edit] Later career
Menuhin regularly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, sometimes performing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. One of the more memorable, later performances was of the violin concerto of Sir Edward Elgar, which Menuhin had recorded with the composer for HMV in London in 1932. He also hosted the PBS telecast of the gala opening concert of the orchestra from Davies Symphony Hall in September 1980. During the 1970s, '80s and '90s, he made jazz recordings with Stéphane Grappelli, classical recordings with L. Subramaniam and albums of Eastern music with the great sitarist Ravi Shankar. In 1983 he founded the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Folkestone, Kent. In 1985 he was awarded British citizenship and was now entitled to the accolade "Sir Yehudi" as his knighthood was no longer honorary. In 1990 he was the first conductor for the Asian Youth Orchestra which toured around Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong with Julian Lloyd Webber and a group of young talented musicians from all over Asia.
[edit] Personal life
Yehudi Menuhin was married twice. He first married Nola Nicholas, daughter of an Australian industrialist, and sister of Hephzibah Menuhin's first husband Lindsay Nicholas. They had two children, Krov and Zamira. Following their divorce, he married the British ballerina and actress Diana Gould, with whom he had two sons, Gerard and Jeremy, a pianist.
The name Yehudi means 'Jew' in Hebrew. In an interview published in October 2004, he recounted to New Internationalist magazine the story of his name:
Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: "And you'll be glad to know I don't take Jews." Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called "The Jew."[1]
Ironically, in November 2005 his son Gerard was forced to resign from his post as chairman of the Yehudi-Menuhin-Stiftung for expressing his alleged neo-Nazi, and surely anti-Zionist, opinion suggesting that "Germany was being blackmailed by an international Jewish conspiracy preying on the country’s war guilt".[2]
A picture of Menuhin as a child is sometimes used as part of a Thematic Apperception Test.[3]
Lord Menuhin died in Berlin, Germany following a brief illness, from complications of bronchitis.
Soon after his death, the Royal Academy of Music acquired the Yehudi Menuhin Archive, one of the most comprehensive collections ever assembled by an individual musician.
[edit] Awards and Recognitions
- Sonning Award (1972; Denmark)
- Kennedy Center Honors (1986)
In 1987 his recording of the Elgar: Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 with Julian Lloyd Webber won the BRIT Award for Best British Classical Recording. The recording was also chosen as the finest ever version by BBC Music Magazine. In 1990 he was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in recognition of his lifetime of contributions. He received a Doctorate Honoris causa from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 1993 he was created a life peer as Baron Menuhin, of Stoke d'Abernon in the County of Surrey.[4] In the European Parliament in Brussels, the room in which concerts and performances are held is called the "Yehudi Menuhin Space".
[edit] Cultural References
The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" popular in the 1930s and 1940s was inspired by Menuhin's guest appearance on a radio show, where Jerry Colonna turned "Yehoodi" into a widely recognized slang term for a mysteriously absent person. It eventually lost all of its original connection with Menuhin. Yehudi Menuhin was also 'meant' to appear on The Morecambe and Wise Show but couldn't as he was 'opening at the Argyl Theatre, Birkenhead'. He was instead replaced by Eric Morecambe in a famous sketch featuring the conductor Andre Previn[5]
[edit] Bibliography
- Menuhin, Diana (1984). Fiddler's Moll. Life With Yehudi. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0312288190.
- Menuhin, Yehudi (1977). Unfinished Journey. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0394410513.
- Subramaniam, L.; Menuhin, Yehudi; Directed by Jean Henri Meunier. (1999). Violin From the Heart (documentary film) [DVD].
Menuhin was also mentioned a number of times in Pat Conroy's novel The Prince of Tides.
[edit] Films
- 1979 - The Music of Man (television series)
[edit] References
- ^ "Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999)" (October 2004). New Internationalist (372).
- ^ Roger Boyes. "Menuhin's son forced to resign over 'anti-Semitic' interviews", The Times, 15 November 2005. Retrieved on 2007-01-27.
- ^ "A young boy is contemplating a violin...", University of Tennessee. Retrieved on 2007-01-27.
- ^ Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin: thepeerage.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-04.
- ^ YouTube - Broadcast Yourself
[edit] External links
- Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists
- Yehudi Menuhin Center Saanen/Gstaad Schweiz
- International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation
- The International Music School Founded by Yehudi Menuhin
- PBS Series American Masters Yehudi Menuhin
- YouTube-Elgar Performance
- From the Sitar to the Guitar - The 1995 concerts featuring Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar
- Youtube Paganini Concerto: Third Movement
- Youtube: Paganini's Moto Perpetuo
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Menuhin, Yehudi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, Yehudi (full name with title) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Violinist and conductor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 22, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City, New York, United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 12, 1999 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
