Yehudi Menuhin: The Violin of the Century

It is with great pride that we include in the Classic Archive series the long-awaited DVD edition of one of Bruno Monsaingeon’s finest archive films, Yehudi Menuhin, The Violin of the Century. This 1995 documentary is the result of more than thirty years of friendship and collaboration between the film-maker and the great violinist, who agreed to share his memories of his life and career with the camera. The result is an extraordinarily rich and fascinating album packed with unique photographic records and film extracts going back to the youth of this most intense of violinists. Menuhin himself narrates with his characteristic sensitivity, charm and elegance.
As a bonus, Classic Archive offers two pieces which have been important in Menuhin’s life but are paradoxically quite rare in his discography and have never previously been released on video: Bloch’s Abodah and Ravel’s Kaddish, filmed in colour in 1973 for the French television series Chemins de la Musique (as it happened, one of the young Bruno Monsaingeon’s early assignments); and the Fugue from the Sonata for Solo Violin which Yehudi Menuhin commissioned from Béla Bartók.