Menuhin and the Orchestra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 6

Menuhin and the Orchestra

EHUDI MENUHIN will play two concertos with the National Orchestra under Michael Bowles, at a concert in the Wellington Town Hall on Tuesday, July 24. Menuhin’s appearance with the orchestra, the only one during his strenuous New Zealand tour (nine concerts in fourteen.days) is by arrangement with the NZBS, and the whole concert will be broadcast by 2YA. The «concertos, which will make up the . entire programme, will be the Brahms and the Beethoven, Listeners who are to. have this unusual treat will probably feel that two major concertos make a heavy evening’s work for any musician, but it will be no new thing fot: Menuhin. On a European tour while still in his early teens he once played not only the Brahms and Beethoven, but a Bach concerto as well in a single evening, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Bruno Walter. And last year in,the Albert Hall he played two’ concertos without. rehearsal: after arriving in his street clothes an hour and a half late he had just motored 75 miles because his plane, delayed by fog in Ireland after a trans-Atlantic crossing, had found London also shrouded. Now aged 35, Menuhin has travelled much since his last visit to New Zealand, during his first world tour, in 1935. After that tour he withdrew from public life entirely for nearly two years. Living for most of that time on a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California, he studied and extended his repertoire. When he again faced the public and began his second world tour, the child prodigy had become one of the greatest living masters of the violin. What is the secret of Menuhin’s genius? «Neither the great vidlinist’s ‘father,. Moshe. Menuhin, nor his mother can explain it. Neither was a practical musician, although his mother played the piano a little and his father +had scholarly, cultured tastes. Yehudi «was born in New York, but: his musical education began,in San Francisco when’ he was: a year old. Wrapped ‘in a shawl, and with a bottle of milk to keep him from crying,, he went with his parents on .their ,weekly visits to, the concert halls. It was only a year.or two later that he was presented with a toy »violin because of ,his interest in’ music. .He flung it on the floor and jumped on iit ‘because it wouldn’t "sing." On his fourth birthday he was given a real violin, and he was only seven when.he .played the Mendelssohn concerto with the San ‘Francisco Symphony Orchestra to an audience of 9000. But the most memorable of his childhood performances was his playing of the Beethoven concerto at Carnegie Hall with «the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Fritz Busch. His hands were too small to tune the three-quar-ter size.Grancino, which he had to pass for this purpose to the leader of the orchestra. "His entry came nearer anil nearer," Donald Brook described the occasion in Violinists of Today, "and at the last moment-only a few bars before he was

F 2 =. ott Ste P oS ed to raised | his fiddle and started his’ gigantic task with all the ‘self-assurance in the world. It was a memorable occasion. He played like a virtuoso with thirty years’ experience behind him. At the finish the audience found that mere clapping would not adequately express their

feelings; cheer after cheer broke out, and several hundreds of the 3000 present rose to their feet. Tears streamed from the eyes of old ladies, and after the first acknowledgment of the applause, Fritz Busch came down from his rostrum, took Yehudi in his arms, and kissed him."

And it was not just a case of being tarried away by the occasion. The critic Olin Downes wrote in the New York Times afterwards: "It seems ridiculous to say that he showed a mature conteption of Beethoven’s concerto, but that is the fact.’ His playing was similarly praised in Britain and on the Continent. During the war Menuhin played to troops in the war areas. One trip took him to the Aleutian Islands, where he gave 64 concerts in one month. He, made many tours in aid of war charities-he was in Australia during this periodand is said to have raised over five million dollars. After the liberation of Paris he was the first artist to play in the Paris Opera House, and he has ‘since visited other parts of Europe. His second visit to New Zealand follows an Australian tour. Hephzibah Menuhin, his pianist sister, is making the tour with him as accompanist. Donald Brook said of Menuhin that he can produce "a tone unparalleled in the history of the violin: for cleanliness, smoothness and quality generally it is comparable with that of Heifetz, but is considerably warmer. His style is capable of seemingly innumerable variations, and technically difficult works simply do not worry him at all, The Bartok concerto, which is considered to be one of the most difficult we possess, he plays with incredible ease." The inclusion of Menuhin’s concert with the National Orchestra in the programme for 2YA will make necessary some rearrangement of regular 2YA features. Listeners will find details on the programme pages.