It is a pity that an artiste of the stature of Yehudi Menuhin, citizen of the world, compatriot of all cultures, a musician who had been ...
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It is a pity that an artiste of the stature of Yehudi Menuhin, citizen of the world, compatriot of all cultures, a musician who had been performing for three-quarters of a century, and the most successful child prodigy of all time, did not live to see the second millennium. For, he embodies the multiculturality of music and millennial nationhood as nothing else does.
Born in 1916 in New York to Russian Jewish parents and made a Lord Baron of Stoke D8217;Aberton to be precise in 1993, the 82-year-old was a man who rewrote the idiom of artiste as mere maestro. He was a man as committed to art as he was to the world. Though he was Jewish, it did not stop him from playing for Germans in Berlin just two years after the Second World War. His American citizenship did not prevent him from playing a series of concerts in Moscow in 1945 at the beginning of the Cold War. Nor did he fight shy of criticising the Israeli state for its treatment of Palestinians 8212; it infuriated his father8217;s countrymen no end but did not prevent them from honouring him.
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His was a classic example to the kiss-and-sell celebritydom of the George Michaels or even the earnest soul-and-bottom-baring martyrdom of Alanis Morrisette. He was a man who had been in public since the age of seven when he debuted in San Francisco. By 11, he was playing with the New York Symphony Orchestra and by 13, he had been identified as the evidence of God8217;s existence by no less than rationality8217;s guru Albert Einstein. Yet, never did the breath of scandal taint his public image, not even when he divorced his first wife in 1947. Menuhin was a great musician and teacher, but more than that he invented internationalism 8212; a symbol of the United Nations before it became a bad word. Not surprisingly, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said his vision and culture gave him a deep empathy with fellow human beings of every creed and colour. His music reflected that spirit of eternal search: he admired the early Beatles music, played jazz with Stephane Grappelli and mixed Indian music with Ravi Shankar.Menuhin8217;s generous obituaries have recalled how as a nine-year-old he felt if he played Bach beautifully enough in the Sistine Chapel it would automatically bring peace to the world. He called it a childish dream, but that is precisely the feeling his playing inspired in generations touched by his brilliance and humanism.
A Renaissance man, he could play a brilliant piece of Mozart, speak for the environment and in defence of human rights, all without seeming a desperately-seeking crusader of arclights. Fittingly, he died with his metaphorical musical boots on: he was to have conducted the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra in Berlin on Tuesday before he was taken ill. He wasn8217;t the sequestered artist-at-work Clive Linley of Ian McEwan8217;s Amsterdam. Instead, to borrow McEwan8217;s words, at a time when genius has suffered much inflationary overuse, he was the ultimate non-negotiable gold standard. A great man and greater musician has passed away. Let the violins weep.
