Yehudi Menuhin was the golden boy, a prodigy violinist who was playing in public by the age of seven.
Internationally famous from his teens, he eventually became a musical elder statesman, with a knighthood and a baronetcy from his adopted Britain. He was brought up by his Russian immigrant parents on the west coast of America, and it was there he found his first main teacher, Louis Persinger. From 1927 he studied in Paris with the Romanian violinist-composer George Enescu. Menuhin’s pre-war concert debuts became the stuff of legend, as did his 1932 recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto with the composer conducting.
After World War Two, during which he gave many concerts for the Allied troops, Menuhin had a failed marriage behind him and physical struggles caused by poor posture and a clumsy technique in front of him. When he was on form, he played with a big tone and strong articulation, a perfect combination for the music of Bartók, which he understood instinctively. In his thirties, however, he began to question his technique, sparking a crisis that affected the quality of his playing markedly.
A successful second marriage and a devotion to yoga and meditation sustained Menuhin and he became a musician of wider perspectives. From the late 1950s, he began working regularly as conductor of the Bath Festival Orchestra, a chamber ensemble he founded. In the 1960s and 1970s, less conventionally for a classical musician at the time, he worked with musicians from other traditions, in particular the sitarist Ravi Shankar and the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. This opened the door for a new generation of classically trained musicians to explore the wider world of music. Chief among them was his pupil Nigel Kennedy, one of numerous world-class musicians to come out of the specialist music school in southern England that Menuhin founded in 1963.
Yehudi Menuhin & Yoga
In middle age, strains and tensions in Yehudi Menuhin’s body began to interrupt the consistency of his playing and he struggled to bring his intuitive understanding into consciousness. Menuhin searched to discover how to bring release to his bodily tension.
In 1951, as Menuhin describes it, a “life changing encounter” took place in the waiting room of an osteopath during a concert tour in New Zealand. Trying to fill the time while his sister Hephzibah had a treatment, Menuhin found a small book on Hatha Yoga.
Although he had never heard of yoga before this book, he gleaned enough from borrowing the book for the duration of his week-long tour of New Zealand to develop the rudiments of a regular asana practice. He wanted to learn more about yoga and the benefits that came with following a regular practice. Through various friends and contacts he learnt about a yoga teacher going by the name of Iyengar. After a couple of lessons with B.K.S. Iyengar, Yehudi knew that yoga was the answer to his inner tension.
In 1954, Iyengar spent more than six weeks in Gstaad, Switzerland where Menuhin was performing as Menuhin’s personal yoga instructor.
Menuhin and Iyengar remained good friends for the rest of their lives.
Scaravelli Inspired Yoga Teacher Catherine Annis
07747 19 69 14
Camden, London, UK
