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Yehudi Menuhin dies in Berlin of heart failure

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin died of heart failure today in a Berlin hospital, his German concert promoter said. He was 82.

Menuhin had cancelled a concert in Berlin on Tuesday because he was not feeling well, promoter Jutta Adler said.

Born in April 1916 in New York of Russian Jewish emigrant parents, Menuhin astonished a San Francisco audience at the age of seven with a debut violin performance that was by all accounts brilliant for a violinist at any age.

Four years later, he played at New York's Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the great German conductor Fritz Busch. By 13, he had won accolades in Berlin, Paris and London.

In one famous incident, at his first concert in Berlin a few days short of his 13th birthday, Albert Einstein followed Menuhin backstage, hugged him, and declared: "Now I know there is a god in heaven."

Thus began a glittering international career in which he performed with leading conductors and orchestras all over the world, including Indian sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar.

AP

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