Music: Virtuoso

2 minute read
TIME

They say Europe is effete. They say nothing can move sophisticated Europe. . . . Last week in the Salle Gaveau (Paris concert hall) a fair-haired little boy in a blue sailor suit put his violin under his chin and played Mozart. When he had finished he smiled simply at the big audience—smiled, and soon went on playing. He did not seem to notice that women were weeping, that men were looking at their waistcoat buttons. .After his last number, he could not help noticing that hats were flying up in the air, that the room was ringing with deafening cheers; that women were throwing violets at him. Startled, he ran off the stage. His mother protected him from men and women who came plunging through back doors crying, “He is a love!” “He is divine!” Police had to help his motor leave the hall. . . . His name is Yehudi Menuhin. He is 10. He was born in New York, raised in San Francisco. His parents came from Palestine. Both San Francisco and Manhattan have cheered his playing. After hearing him do the solo parts in Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole” under Conductor Paul Paray of the famed Lamoureux orchestra in his first Paris concert, Paris critics said: “Not since the— child Mozart, seated on a pile of music on a piano stool. . . .”

Yehudi Menuhin is to study under Master Eugene Ysaÿe of Belgium. His sisters, Yaltah, 5, and Hephzobah, 6, play pianos.

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