BOY GENIUS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 3

BOY GENIUS

YEHUDI MENUHIN

HIS MEETING WITH ELGAR

REMARKABLE GROWTH

Who shall define genius? Who saywhat is the mysterious quality of the most 'precious gift of the gods .to mankind? When all the philosophers have passed it through the crucible of their minds, its elements remain as inexplicable .as before, writes H. E. Wortham in the London "Daily Telegraph." Genius simply is. And the only thing to do before it, as Schumann said of the young Brahms, is to take off one's hat. ♦ I took off mine to Yehudi Menuhin the first time I heard him. I wondered, like everyone else, at the miracle. There was a boy, a healthy youngster, interpreting the masterpieces with, a complete maturity of understanding. Age?—He is not yet 16. "We had the Beethoven Concerto^—a thing to which great artists have given their lives. And young Yehudi, calm and absolutely unmoved, played it with a profundity of thought and feeling that you would have said impossible for anyone who had not lived and suffered from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Yehudi has never done that. The whole world has agreed to acclaim kirn as the genius of the violin. And 'his father and mother are devoting their lives to making an environment for Yehudi and his two little sisters in which they shall enjoy their youth amid sound discipline and home pleasures. , YEAR OF GEOWTH. One cannot explain the miraculous. But one can. see something of the circumstances in iWhich this extraordinary boy is growing up. In a letter from his father "which Mr. Harold Holt has shown me, Mr. Mbshe Menuhin gives some remarkably interesting particulars about his genius of a son. It was written from Berlin, where Yehudi has just had an enormous success. Mr. Menuhin describes the enthusiasm amounting to frenzy of the Berliners. But. he adds:-—' , "What interests me is~the fait that Yehudi has progressed musically in the course of this past year tenfold! He has matured in a fashion so ripe, so masterly, and yet so human and healthy that his playing now brings with it an atmosphere of happiness and joy." The father goes on to ask what has brought about this ripening in his son's art —and answers that it is nothihg but "our regular principled procedure." But a boy like Yehudi naturally' meets other great musicians, and gains from this intercourse. _ One of the outstanding events in his life this year was the six days in May he spent with Toscanini on an Atlantic liner. Yehudi passed happy hours every day in his company. " ' . ', ' "I can assure you (Yehudi'a father writes) that in terms of time, work, quantity, and quality, he could not have accomplished so much with anybody else in two months. It was an atmosphere" of activity, feverish work, intense enthusiasm on the part of both. "'Go on, Caro!' Toscanini would always burst out .'But, Maestro, don't you think there is something wrong with my interpretation here, there?' 'Play on, go ahead. Bravol Bravissimq I' - . "When they walked the deck for hours later in the day, they would discuss points in the music, played or to be played. -Yehudi will never forget the happy days he had with his friend Toscanini." . PRESENT FROM ELGAR. When they reached Paris Yehudi laid the. basis of another friendship. Mr Menuhin shall tell it in his own words: One day Yehudi received a piece of music. Usually we pile up new music in a corner in his music room for more leisurely times. Somehow it was left v r l-Ae^- Xt as signed, 'To Master lehudi Menuhin, from his admiring friend, Edward Elgar, with all good wishes. . v "I?J: h?'°7eilhlS,,zt 10 o'clock, we heard Yehudi whistling in his bed. He is always asleep by 8.30 p.m. (and does not,, as somebody has said, go to bed at 11 p.m.-). -We were aroused by that peculiar sound. " 'What is the matter, Yehudi? You ought to have been asleep a lons time •ago?' ~ . . 'But, father, this concerto that we received to-day belongs to the masterpieces; it is great stuff. I love it. I am just crazy about its many lovely melodies—they haunt me! ♦ In the morning Yehudi had dark lines under his eyes. . . : "At 9 a.m. the mail came, and, a strange coincidence happened: a gramophone company requested the privilege of having- Yehudi record the Elgar concerto, with Sir Edward conducting his own work, on the occasion of the great master's, 75th birthday. "Yehudi was wildly excited. 'If they can give me a month I shall tackle it, and hope to do it justice!' A telegram was sent, a date was made, several days were set aside for going over the work with Sir Edward. Yehudi played the concerto through once for Elgar, and Sir Edward's face beamed. He refused to sit down. _ 'My dear boy, it cannot be better. It is ■ the finest rendering of my concerto. It is great. Let us go to the races, or go and see London. You need not work on it ono single minute.1 It is perfect!' _ "Yehudi was happy. It reminded him of Toscanini's 'Bravo, Caro Bravissimo!' " CHAMBER MUSIC. Mr. Menuhin gives some interesting details about Yehudi's methods of work. For three months during the past year he has worked with Georges Eneseo who refuses to recognise or call Yehudi his "pupil." He says that Yehudi's teachers, from his very babyhood, have learned from the boy as much as they have ever given him. The two worked together on Yehudi's new repertoire Ho now knows forty-eight concertos, all the sonatas of Bach (twelve), all of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, and a host of others He has, of course, scores of smaller pieces at his command. His thirst for knowledge, his father says, is insatiable. He insists upon studying and playing through all the chamber music that there is for the violin—almost a life task by itself.

■ But music is not all of the life which he- leads, for the most part at Versailles. Four hours a day is given to it, and the *% f t, he working day is occupied m, teachers from the Sorbonne Three hours is devoted to. exercise— and twelve to sleep. "From 8.30 to 8.30 is sleep time, although it may come l°° 1?*? 11 hours < from P-ni. to 8 £, m: . . Thla ls a law, and going out at Viw 8- a rare tWngl" The y°uthfui Say^forHsaTll^ *" ™rt,V M wh\ MenUhin ia a determine* i" never have been at cS'viet:! 75' aDd he h°Ms **■ de'

"Our home is a school plus a cont.Th toirl Y°U See> ™ ™re o n °ee teachers both m 7 wife and I; We could not inculcate an 7 real good in others under the present ridiculous system of education, wherein mass production in education reflects the mass production