Menuhin, Yaltah (1921–2001)

American-born pianist and member of the musically brilliant Menuhin family. Name variations: Yalta Menuhin. Born in San Francisco, California, on October 7, 1921; died in London in June 2001; daughter of Moshe Menuhin andMarutha Sher Menuhin ; sister of Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) andHephzibah Menuhin (1920–1981); married William Stix; married Joel Ryce; children: two sons.

Yaltah Menuhin shared the talent of a remarkable musical family. Although her sister Hephzibah Menuhin was far better known as a pianist than she, and her brother Yehudi Menuhin became one of the best-known violinists of modern times, Yaltah too would enjoy a life in music. She began to play the piano at age three. Within a year, wishing to play music as well as her siblings (even though she was more than five years younger than Yehudi and almost two years younger than Hephzibah), she was taken to Paris because her brother and sister had begun to study there. In Paris, the piano professor Marcel Ciampi had accepted Hephzibah as a pupil but would not hear of giving lessons to her younger sister. Yaltah took matters into her own hands, rushing to the piano where she began to play the opening bars of Schumann's Kinderscenen. Then and there, Ciampi agreed to teach Yaltah along with her siblings. Yaltah's piano training continued in New York at the Juilliard School, where her teacher was Carl Friedberg. Her brother Yehudi once described her style of musical performance as "more poetic, more emotional" than that of his sister Hephzibah.

On rare occasions, music lovers could witness the three Menuhins performing together, as when Hephzibah and Yaltah played Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat Major, K. 365, with Yehudi conducting the orchestra (this performance is preserved in a recording on the Seraphim label). Yaltah has appeared worldwide as a soloist as well as an accompanist to leading instrumentalists. Perhaps her most charming performances were those in which she played duo piano works with her second husband, Joel Ryce, with whom she won the Harriet Cohen International Music Award in 1962. Among her best recordings are those that she made with Ryce for the EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Everest, and World Record Club labels.

sources:

Grindea, Carola. "Three Menuhins," in Clavier: A Magazine for Pianists & Organists. Vol. 23, no. 9. November 1984, pp. 28–32.

Menuhin, Yehudi. Unfinished Journey. London: Methuen, 1996.

Palmer, Tony. Menuhin: A Family Portrait. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.

John Haag , Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia