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Child prodigy pianist Yaltah Menuhin was able to produce a peculiarly deep interpretation of Beethoven’s Waldstein (Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53) when she went to Australia in the early ’80s to memorialize her sister Hephzibah Menuhin (1920-1981), also a child prodigy pianist. Both sisters, but especially Hephzibah, had made recordings with their famous brother and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, widely regarded as the greatest child prodigy musician since Mozart. Yaltah’s son, author Lionel Rolfe, brought back the recording made in a Melbourne studio when he returned from his mother’s London flat where he went to settle her estate in 2001. Yaltah wanted to remember her sister with "Visions & Prophecies" by Ernst Bloch, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, represented here, and Beethoven’s Waldstein, among others. As children the three Menuhin children had known Bloch as an adult they teased. He was sometimes a difficult man. But his music was sublime. Yaltah needed to play this music as beautifully as she could in Hephzibah’s memory. This was not her public performing. These were private performances, musical love-making of a kind she didn’t necessarily want to do publicly. This was intimate and private music-making. She kept the tapes in an honored place in her West Hamptead flat and never talked about releasing them.

Child prodigy pianist Yaltah Menuhin was able to produce a peculiarly deep interpretation of Beethoven’s Waldstein (Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53) when she went to Australia in the early ’80s to memorialize her sister Hephzibah Menuhin (1920-1981), also a child prodigy pianist. Both sisters, but especially Hephzibah, had made recordings with their famous brother and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, widely regarded as the greatest child prodigy musician since Mozart. Yaltah’s son, author Lionel Rolfe, brought back the recording made in a Melbourne studio when he returned from his mother’s London flat where he went to settle her estate in 2001. Yaltah wanted to remember her sister with "Visions & Prophecies" by Ernst Bloch, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and Beethoven’s Waldstein, among others. As children the three Menuhin children had known Bloch as an adult they teased. He was sometimes a difficult man. But his music was sublime. Yaltah needed to play this music as beautifully as she could in Hephzibah’s memory. This was not her public performing. These were private performances, musical love-making of a kind she didn’t necessarily want to do publicly. This was intimate and private music-making. She kept the tapes in an honored place in her West Hamptead flat and never talked about releasing them.

First Movement

Movements 2 and 3:

Yaltah Menuhin, the prodigy pianist and sister of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart, made this private recording in Australia when she went for the memorial in the early ’80s for her sister Hephzibah, also a prodigy pianist. All three children knew Bloch well.

www.boryanabooks.com is run by Yaltah’s son, Lionel Rolfe, an author and journalist. Check our catalog for his book, “The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin and Willa Cather,” available at Amazon’s Kindlestore for iPads, iPhones, Kindles and desktop computers.

His first book, “The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey,” is also available digitally. Rolfe has written seven books, including those devoted to politics, literature and politics.

You can read about Yaltah Menuhin in a couple of the books by her son Lionel Rolfe available through this web site and also here.

Next, consider this rare recording of Yaltah playing the Mozart Sonata K.378 with her brother Yehudi. It was released in 1938 when she was 16. You can hear it here on www.yaltahmenuhin, com.

And now, in an exclusive, www.boryanabooks.com presents a heretofore unknown recording of Yaltah Menuhin playing Visions & Prophecies by Ernest Bloch, a composer who annoyed her in real life, but a man who produced works of profound merit. In the Mozart recording with Yehudi, Yaltah is obviously a young pianist. In the Bloch, one hears a mature interpretation. Yaltah often played more modern music than her brother and Bloch was one of her favorites. She recorded original performances of works by composers such as Eric Zeisl, George Antheil and Darius Milhaud. We will later present never-before-released recordings of Yaltah playing Bach and Mendelsohn, among others.

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Listen to Yehudi Menuhin, known as the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart, playing a portion of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, the greatest piece of violin music ever written. No one has ever topped Yehudi’s interpretation of the music.

Yehudi’s is believed to be the concerto’s greatest interpeter.