• The Man
• The Music
• The Words
• The Legacy

• Timeline

Timeline

• 1916 - 1929: The Prodigy
• 1930 - 1938: Jeunesse dorée
• 1939 - 1956: War and Peace
• 1957 - 1979: Festivals and Festivities
• 1980 - 1999: Music's Ambassador to the World
• 1999 Onwards: After Menuhin's Death

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1916 - 1929: The Prodigy

1916

22 April: Born in New York City to Moshe Menuhin and Marutha Sher

1918

Family moves to San Francisco

1920

Birth of a sister, Hephzibah

1921

Birth of a sister, Yaltah

Yehudi starts violin lessons with Sigmund Anker (lasting two years)

First performance at a pupils’ concert

“When I began it was pure instinct. I had the knack, the gift, the will.”
Yehudi Menuhin

1923

Lessons begin with Louis Persinger

1924

Yehudi’s public concert début. Aged seven, he plays Bériot’s Scène de Ballet accompanied at the piano by Louis Persinger

“I was, in some ways, the pupil of Persinger’s abandoned dreams.”
Yehudi Menuhin

1925

First full length recital (with Persinger at the piano) in San Francisco

1926

New York recital début at the Manhattan Opera House

“Yehudi Menuhin is the name. Remember it! It is not easy, but some day it may become a household word!”
Musical America, 1926

First concerto performance (Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole) with the San Francisco Orchestra conducted by Louis Persinger.

The Menuhin family sail to Europe for the first time

“He was travelling almost as soon as he started playing. We were all on the road. Eighteen valises for a train in Romania that came two hours late, and we’d arrived at the station two hours earlier. It was the life of gypsies.”
Yaltah Menuhin

1927

Paris début (aged ten) in two concerts with the Lamoureux Orchestra under Paul Paray: Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto

Starts lessons with Enescu in Paris and Romania

First concerto concert (Beethoven) in Carnegie Hall, with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Busch

1928

First recordings for Victor

First US concert tour

1929

Gift of Stradivarius violin ‘Prince Khevenhüller’ from Henry Goldman

Berlin début, playing Bach, Beethoven and Brahms Concertos, with Bruno Walter conducting the Berlin Philharmonic

Studies with Adolf Busch (and in summer 1930)

“Without him, I would not have been able to understand and penetrate the spirit and heart of that music of mists and forests, of drama and contained passion”
Yehudi Menuhin

Menuhins establish family home in Basel

London début at Queen’s Hall, LSO conducted by Fritz Busch

First solo recordings for HMV