Menuhin was born of a distinguished rabbinical dynasty. The name Yehudi (‘Jew’ in Hebrew) was decided when a prospective landlady told his parents that she didn’t take Jews: his mother vowed that her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world.

Menuhin’s fame began with his first public performance aged eight and the commencement of his seventy-year recording career four years later. His playing was intuitively musical, eliciting praise from a New York Times critic in 1927: ‘It may seem ridiculous to say that he showed a mature conception of Beethoven’s Concerto, but that is the fact’, and Elgar’s comment to Delius: ‘The way that boy plays my concerto is amazing.’ Despite this adulation and all his training with Pers...