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| Programme cover from the 1988 Galway Concert |
Menuhin (22 April 1916 – 12 March
1999) was a Russian-American Jewish violinist and conductor who spent most of
his performing career in the United Kingdom. He is often considered to be one
of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. The press release issued by
Music For Galway in 1988 publicising this concert outlines the many reasons why
Menuhin is so highly revered. “Yehudi Menuhin is of course most famous as a
violinist but the list of his other achievements is also staggering. He is particularly
dedicated to young people and to the cause of world peace …Menuhin’s role as a
conductor has been increasingly important in recent years. He is President and
Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Sinfonia
and European Community Youth Orchestra.”
Menuhin was a boy prodigy, giving
his first public concert début aged seven, he played Bériot’s Scène de Ballet
accompanied at the piano by Louis Persinger. The outbreak of war in Europe in
1939 coincided with the birth of daughter Zamira and his first tour of South
America later that same year. During World War II, Yehudi Menuhin gave more
than 500 concerts for the Allied Armed Forces, in recognition of which he was
awarded the French Legion of Honour, the Croix de Lorraine; the Belgian Ordre
de la Couronne and Ordre Leopold; The Order of Merit from West Germany and the
Order of the Phoenix from Greece. Menuhin went with the composer Benjamin
Britten to perform for the inmates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after
its liberation in April 1945. He went back to Germany in 1947 to perform music
under the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler as an act of reconciliation, becoming
the first Jewish musician to go back to Germany after the Holocaust.
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| Press cuttings from local press in Galway, 1988 |
In 1950 Menuhin challenged
apartheid in South Africa and also undertook his first visit to Israel, despite
threats against him. In 1989 he conducts Messiah
in the Kremlin shortly after the collapse of the Communist regime. He has
constantly been at the forefront of music and at the place and role of music in
society and in its healing power on reconciliation.
In 1963, wishing to ensure
continuance of the art of violin playing, Menuhin founded the Yehudi Menuhin
School of Music at Stoke d’Abernon in Surrey, England, where it is still
operating today. Yehudi Menuhin died in 1999.
The files in the Music For Galway
Archive here in the James Hardiman Library relating to the concert by the Irish
Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Sir Yehudi Menuhin are listed below:
P/91
5/7/149
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The Irish
Chamber Orchestra
20 Nov 1988
Printed programme from the concert conducted by
Sir Yehudi Menuhin and featuring Daire Fitzgerald, held at Leisureland,
Salthill, Galway.
Includes details of pieces performed, notes on each piece and information on individual musicians. (3 copies, 8 pp) Financial information including fees, expenditure and expected income; draft TS press releases and a biographical essay on Sir Yehudi Menuhin. 31 pp |
5/7/150
|
The Irish
Chamber Orchestra (Yehudi Menuhin)
Nov 1988
Colour photographs, 151mm X 101mm, from a public
occasion,
attended by the Mayor of Galway, in honour of Yehudi Menuhin. Also pictured playing the fiddle is musician Frankie Gavin. Yehudi is also pictured signing an official register/visitor’s book, with the Galway city crest on it. 28 items |
5/7/151
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The Irish
Chamber Orchestra (Yehudi Menuhin)
1988
Assorted press cuttings taken from the Sunday
Press
and other unnamed publications reporting from the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Yehudi Menuhin concert in Galway. Includes black and white images of Menuhin. 7 items
The Menuhin Archive is housed at the Royal Academy of
Music, London. The catalogue can be searched here: http://apollo.ram.ac.uk/emuweb/pages/ram/results.php
The Music For Galway Archive is currently being
catalogued here at the James Hardiman Library. For any enquiries email barry.houlihan@nuigalway.ie |
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