I believe you will enjoy reading about Yehudi Menuhin as a young man. There was more to his life than just playing the violin.
If you have not already purchased your copy of From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall, you can do so by clicking right here. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and it has received rave reviews from an ever-growing number of literary and musical reviewers and readers. I am confident you will enjoy it!
For those just beginning this blog, please be aware that this is the second part of a story that began in my previous blog entry (below this current chapter).
Yehudi’s father takes the helm in Paris
By the year 1927, Yehudi Menuhin was 11 years old and residing with his family in Paris. His father was now present, having been gifted with a leave of absence from his San Francisco schools by his employers with promise of a greater salary when he returned, though he never did. Moshe Menuhin took to his new tasks in Europe with the same unbridled enthusiasm that he displayed for every other activity in life, according to Yehudi. Specifically, Moshe began to supplant his wife in some of the essential parts of Yehudi’s life. He handled trip organization and attended his son’s lessons while taking careful notes. These notes were reviewed in detail with Yehudi immediately after these lessons to solidify growth and understanding as soon as possible. This allowed Yehudi’s mother Marutha to begin formal piano lessons with Yehudi’s two younger sisters, Hephzibah and Yaltah, who quickly proved their own talents to one of the great Parisian teachers of the time, Marcel Ciampi, who described the family as an entire music school springing from Mrs. Menuhin’s womb. This relationship later bore even more fruit, as Ciampi eventually became a teacher at Yehudi’s own school.
1928 – Yehudi Menuhin and his sisters, Hepzibah (left) and Yaltah (right)
Yehudi’s first European Concerts
While in Paris young Yehudi and his sisters delved into learning French. Slowly the routine of their lives ate away at their homesickness for San Francisco. Every day was very similar, with music practice, then an outing in the morning, lessons and more rehearsal in the afternoon, then early to bed to begin early again – only seldom disrupted by longer excursions outside of Paris proper, and somewhat more frequently by attending evening Parisian concerts as they were able. His attendance at these concerts both widened and deepened the young Menuhin’s knowledge of music as he displayed a greater interest in opera and was enthralled by his first witnessing of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, conducted by Paul Paray, conductor of the Lamoureux Orchestra. Yehudi was given the opportunity to audition for Paray, who immediately invited him to perform Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole the very next week and the Tchaikovsky Concerto the next week after, marking Yehudi’s first official orchestral concerts outside of San Francisco.
The rest of the year continued to be rife with adventures that, although fascinating, would take up far more space than this humble blog will allow, so I encourage my readers to continue their own investigation into Menuhin’s childhood years themselves as we skip forward.
Back to New York and a fight for Beethoven
In autumn of 1927, Yehudi was residing in Sinaia, Romania, when the family received a telegram from New York asking Yehudi’s parents if he might perform in Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony Orchestra, directed by the eminent conductor, Fritz Busch. Yehudi would be performing Mozart’s A Major Concerto at age eleven, and despite his desire to instead play Beethoven, his parents accepted the offer. When the family arrived back in New York City, Yehudi shocked Busch by making clear that he wanted instead to play Beethoven’s Concerto. Grudgingly (for Yehudi had actually been recruited by Walter Damrosch, the regular conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra – not by Busch at all), he was allowed to audition for this performance in Busch’s private hotel room, where the guest conductor was quickly amazed by the young violinist’s talent. The concert was altered, and Yehudi was given the opportunity to perform Beethoven as he desired. They performed two concerts, which succeeded well beyond their expectations.
A Stradivarius is given
From this success, Yehudi Menuhin’s career truly exploded. In 1928, he recorded his first few albums (a new science in the world of that time) at a church in Oakland, and began the first of his cross-country tours, from San Francisco to New York City. One of the attendees of his January 1929 performance of the Tchaikovsky Concerto was Henry Goldman who was known to be equal parts wealthy and generous with his money. Mr. Goldman invited Yehudi to his lavish apartment on Fifth Avenue and despite being blind by this time in his life, pointed out to the impressed young violinist many of the priceless pieces of art adorning his luxurious residence, going into great detail purely from his own mind’s eye. After this excursion, “Uncle Henry” told young Yehudi that he might choose any violin he wanted, no matter the price, and it would be his. After viewing a number of incredibly valuable options, Yehudi chose a violin he had seen just a year previously in San Francisco – a Stradivarius that he had never imagined he might afford himself, entitled the “Prince Khevenhuller” from the famed violin dealer Emil Hermann. Emil himself also gifted Yehudi with the Tourte bow that Menuhin used well into his later years – the bow worth almost a third the price of the violin itself.
Learning from Busch and sibling duets
1929 saw 13-year-old Yehudi performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under Bruno Walter and later studying with another of the pivotal teachers in his life, Adolf Busch, the younger brother of Fritz who had first conducted him at Carnegie Hall just two years previously. The Menuhins established their family home in Basel, Switzerland in 1930 and Yehudi began a regular concert season, performing five times a week across Europe. In 1932, Yehudi performed for the first time with his sister Hephzibah accompanying on piano. The duo continued to play together with some regularity for many decades.
In 1935, young Menuhin staged his first true “world tour” where he visited Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Europe, performing 110 concerts in 72 different cities. He was still just 19 years old.
A break in the USA
By 1937 the family headed back to the United States and California, where they established residence in beautiful, scenic Los Gatos. Yehudi was given his first “break” in a very long time, as he had no concerts to perform for much of that year. He took the opportunity to buy his first car (a Cadillac), explore the Santa Clara Valley and experience a taste of everyday life. By late 1937, Menuhin described himself as being “back in harness” and was touring again.
Love and Marriage
In early 1938, 21–year-old Yehudi was touring in England. He was introduced to an Australian brother and sister, Lindsay and Nola Nicholas, who had attended his Australian concerts back in 1935 and were now on their own grand tour of Europe. Yehudi and Hephzibah fell in love with the close shared relationship between Lindsay and Nola and indeed fell in love with the siblings themselves. Shortly after Yehudi’s concert engagements took him to Holland, he phoned back to Nola in London and proposed on the spot. Nola was reticent at first as they barely knew each other, but Yehudi proved to be just as convincing with her as he was as a child with his musical instructors, and Nola acquiesced to his proposal. When Nola’s father was introduced to this new state of affairs, Hephzibah announced her own engagement to Nola’s brother Lindsay, and youngest sister Yaltah immediately announced an engagement of her own. Nola and Yehudi were married in May of 1938, scarcely two months after their first meeting in London. They had a daughter, Zamira, in 1939 and a son named Krov the year after.
1938 – Nola and Yehudi Menuhin
Relief for the troops
During World War 2, Yehudi, who himself saw his draft status deferred as the father of two young children, performed hundreds of recitals for the troops and relief organizations in the Americas, the Pacific theater, and ultimately in Europe. He performed multiple concerts a day for both troops headed to war and injured soldiers returning.
The end of an important chapter
By 1944, even as Yehudi continued to do what he could musically for the war effort, his marriage ended in divorce, partially because of his long periods of separation from Nola and probably due in large part to the youthful concept of falling in love with the idea of love, rather than the actual person involved.
On that sad note, dear readers, in an effort not to bloat this blog beyond readability, I have decided to add one more chapter, next week, to delve just a bit further into Menuhin’s adult life. I do not intend to cover his entire life, as there are multiple publications that already do that (including an excellent documentary recently done on BBC entitled “Who’s Yehudi”), but I feel there is still a bit more of the story to tell. I hope you are enjoying this information so far and I look forward to one last segment before we move on to another famous personage from From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall. As always, if you have any thoughts or corrections, or any strong opinions on who I might feature next, please feel free to comment below!
Deryn
David Singer, Grammy Award-Winning Professional Musician for 55 years
Author of “From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall“
www.singerclarinet.com
Blog updated frequently
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