Between his birth in New York on 22 April 1916 and his death in Berlin on 12 March 1999, Yehudi Menuhin, the son of humble Russian immigrants, grew from a brilliant child prodigy violinist, who made his public concert début in San Francisco in 1924, aged just 7, into not just one of the 20th century s finest and most celebrated artists (as a conductor as well as a soloist), but also a peace campaigner, civil rights activist, spiritual guru and revered senior statesman of the musical world, who ended his days as the Right Honourable the Lord Menuhin of Stoke d Abernon, with a seat in the House of Lords, yet also found time to establish two music schools, a violin competition and an international scheme for taking music out of the concert hall and into the wider community.
The Menuhin Century commemorates the 100th anniversary of his birth on 22 April 1916.These recordings depict Menuhin as a maker of musical history and place him in the context of momentous historical events.
22nd April 2016 would have been the 100th Birthday of violin legend Yehudi Menuhin, and Daniel Hope dedicates a complete album to his former mentor and close friend. After fleeing from the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and ending up in England, Hope’s mother was offered a job as a secretary to no-one less than Yehudi Menuhin, and later became his manager. Daniel Hope says about him: “Yehudi Menuhin is the reason I became a violinist. I was privileged to know Menuhin all my life – as he used to say, I fell into his lap, as a baby of two years age. Menuhin often called himself my “musical grandfather”. Now, in celebration of what would have been his centenary, my friends and I can finally pay our respects to this great man, in a way I am sure he would have loved,” said Daniel Hope. “My Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin” is a beautiful selection of works, mostly commissioned by or for Yehudi Menuhin. It is released internationally in February 2016.
Many notable Mozart conductors have become broader in their tempos and more detail-obsessed as they aged. Walter, Beecham, Böhm, Klemperer, and even Sir Colin Davis have all fallen under the spell of the music's perfection to the point where they could hardly bear to let it alone. On the other side of the equation are equally great conductors such as Szell, Reiner, Casals, and Toscanini, whose vision intensified instead of mellowing. It is to the latter group that Menuhin belongs, and these superb performances call to mind Toscanini at his best, in the tensile strength of the melodic line, subtle rubato, and miraculously clear articulation.