Yehudi Menuhin

With the death of violinist Yehudi Menuhin at age 82 on March 12, 1999, the music world lost one of its most remarkable talents. Though long identified with the classical repertoire, Menuhin continually explored other avenues for his exceptional technique. Partnerships with Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar produced the pioneering recordings East Meets West and In Celebration, while sessions alongside French violinist Stephane Grappelli generated four landmark albums: Play Berlin, Kern, Porter & Rodgers & Hart, Play Gershwin, Play "Jalousie" and Other Great Standards, and Tea for Two. Classical violinist Isaac Stern characterized him as "an extraordinary musician and a great humanitarian. His style of playing, particularly in his early years, was a stunning patrician elegance with a very natural musical line."

Menuhin revealed musical ability almost from infancy. He began violin lessons at four and appeared with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra three years afterward. His 1927 account of Beethoven's Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall brought worldwide recognition. The first album he made, captured when he turned sixteen, earned France's Prix du Disque.

Born the eldest child of Russian-Jewish immigrants Moshe and Marutha Menuhin, he was still an infant when the family settled in San Francisco. Under the guidance of Louis Persinger, concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, his progress proved rapid. When Persinger relocated to New York in 1925, Menuhin and his relatives accompanied him.

A prosperous attorney soon sponsored the violinist's initial European journey. Although Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye remained unimpressed, Romanian violinist and composer Georges Enesco accepted him as a pupil; Menuhin worked with Enesco until his return to the United States in 1927. During his teenage years he continued to draw notice, recording Elgar's Violin Concerto under the composer's baton and prompting Béla Bartók to write his second Violin Concerto for him.

At nineteen, despite widespread acclaim, Menuhin withdrew from the concert platform for two years to refine his technique at the family property in Los Gatos, CA.

He resumed performing with undiminished authority. Throughout World War II he gave hundreds of recitals at military installations and medical facilities. After the dissolution of his marriage to Nola Nicholas, however, technical command began to slip; a relationship and later marriage to ballet dancer and actress Diana Gould restored the assurance required to regain full command.

Following the war's conclusion, Menuhin presented several landmark programs across Europe. In 1947 he joined composer and conductor Benjamin Britten on a journey to Poland that featured a concert for Bergen-Belsen survivors, and he became the first Jewish musician to appear in Germany since the pre-war period, performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwangler. Over the ensuing four decades he stood among classical music's most commanding figures. After moving to England in 1985 he entered the House of Lords in 1993 and subsequently settled in Switzerland. Esteem remained high in the United States, where President Reagan awarded him a Kennedy Center honor in 1986. Menuhin maintained an active philanthropic life, establishing roughly five hundred charitable bodies. In 1962 he founded a boarding school for musically gifted children in Stoke D'Abergnon; a comparable institution followed in Gstaad, Switzerland.