Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York on 22 April 1916.

He caused a minor sensation when he made his debut, aged seven, as a violinist in San Francisco, and again a year later in New York. Following his European debut in Paris in 1927 he studied with the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, who was to be an enduring influence on his musical development.
In 1927 his performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in New York firmly established him as an international celebrity, and he went on to perform regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. In 1931 Menuhin signed an exclusive recording contract with EMI that ran continuously for 68 years and resulted in some of the company’s most famous recordings.
In addition to his long and successful career as a soloist, Menuhin directed music festivals in Bath, Windsor and Gstaad, and founded a school for musically gifted children at Stoke d’Abernon in Surrey. In more recent years he successfully pursued a second career as a conductor, and in 1993 he was elevated to the peerage. He died on 12 March 1999 in Berlin, where he was to have conducted a concert a few days earlier.