Ida Haendel

Ida Haendel, CBE (born 15 December 1928) is a Polish-British violinist. Haendel was a child prodigy. Her career spans over seven decades. She became an influential teacher.

Born in 1928 to a Polish Jewish family in Chełm, her talents were evident when she picked up her sister’s violin at the age of three. Major competition wins paved the way for success. Performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto, she won the Warsaw Conservatory's Gold Medal and the first Huberman Prize in 1933. At the age of seven she competed against towering virtuosos – the likes of Oistrakh and Neveu – to become a laureate of the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in 1935.

These accolades enabled her to study with the esteemed pedagogues Carl Flesch in London and George Enescu in Paris. During World War II she played in factories and for British and American troops. In 1937 her London debut under the baton of Sir Henry Wood brought her worldwide critical acclaim, and began a lifelong association with the Proms, where she has appeared 68 times.

Haendel has made annual tours of Europe, and also appeared regularly in South America and Asia. Living in Montreal from 1952 to 1989, her collaborations with Canadian orchestras made her a key celebrity of Canadian musical life. Performing with the London Philharmonic in 1973, she was the first Western soloist invited to China following the Cultural Revolution. Although she worked particularly with Sergiu Celibidache, she was also associated with Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Eugene Goossens, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Charles Munch, Otto Klemperer, Sir Georg Solti, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bernard Haitink, Rafael Kubelík and Simon Rattle, with whom she recorded the Elgar and Sibelius violin concertos, available on Testament SBT 1444.

In 1993, she made her concert début with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2006 she performed for Pope Benedict XVI at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later engagements include a tribute concert at London's National Gallery in honour of Dame Myra Hess's War Memorial Concerts, an appearance at the Sagra Musicale Malatestiana Festival in 2010, and a performance of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in Miami with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ida Haendel has lived in Miami, Florida for many years and is actively involved in the Miami International Piano Festival. She is represented by Patrons of Exceptional Artists.

Her major label recordings have earned critical praise, particularly her performance of the Sibelius Concerto which elicited a fan letter from its composer: "I congratulate you on the great success, but most of all I congratulate myself, that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standard". The Sibelius Society awarded her the Sibelius Medal in 1982.

Ida Haendel has said that she has always had a passion for German music. Her recording career began on 10 September 1940 for Decca, initially of short solo pieces and chamber works. In April 1945, she recorded both the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos followed in 1947 by the Dvořák concerto. Her recording career spans nearly 70 years for major labels including EMI and Harmonia Mundi. In 1948-49 she recorded Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Rafael Kubelik conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. Other acclaimed recordings are her renditions of the Brahms Violin Concerto (including one with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sergiu Celibidache...Celibidache's last studio recording)...and Tchaikovsky's with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted Basil Cameron.

Among her later recordings were the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, BWV1001-1006 by J S Bach, recorded at Studio 1 Abbey Road, London in 1995 recorded in analogue and issued by Testament.

She is equally passionate about the music of the 20th century, including Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten and William Walton. Among her premiere performances have been Luigi Dallapiccola's Tartiniana Seconda, and Allan Pettersson's Violin Concerto No. 2, which was dedicated to her. Paying special tribute to her teacher George Enescu, her Decca recording of his Violin Sonata with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 2000 earned her a Diapason d'Or.

Haendel's highly emotive performances have inspired a generation of new violinists, including Anne-Sophie Mutter and Maxim Vengerov.

In August 2012 she was Honorary Artist at the Cambridge International String Festival. She is a regular adjudicator for violin competitions, including the Sibelius, the Carl Flesch, the Benjamin Britten, and the International Violin Competition. She has returned to her native Poland to judge the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznań on a number of occasions, and was Honorary Chairwoman in 2011.

In 1991 she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, and she received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Music in 2000.

Her life has been the subject of several television documentaries, including Ida Haendel: A Voyage of Music (1988), I Am The Violin (2004), and Ida Haendel: This Is My Heritage (2011). In June 2009, she appeared on a Channel 4 television programme, The World's Greatest Musical Prodigies, in which she advised then-16-year-old British composer Alex Prior on which children to choose to play his composition.