From Australia’s Jewish Past
Hephzibah Menuhin – American-Australian pianist, writer, and passionate supporter of women’s and children’s rights.
Hephzibah Menuhin
Hephzibah was born on 20 May 1920 in San Francisco, USA. Her father Moshe Menuhin, from Lithuania, was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
Her mother, Marutha, has been described as “dominant and controlling’’. One brother, Yehudi, was considered one of the great violinists of the twentieth century, and another brother Yaltah was a pianist, painter, and poet.
The Menuhin children had little formal schooling. Hephzibah spent only five days at a San Francisco school, where she was classed as educationally backward. Her parents took her out of school and taught her to read and write at home. At the age of four, she started studying the piano, originally with a specialist in teaching young children, and later with a Russian-born teacher and from there with Leon Fleisher, an American classical pianist and conductor and one of the most renowned pianists in the world. He was described as “one of the most refined and transcendent musicians the United States has ever produced”.
Hephzibah gave her first recital in San Francisco in 1928 when she was eight and later studied in Basel and Paris. In 1933 she and Yehudi made their first recording – a Mozart sonata – which won the Candid Prize as best disc of the year. Her public debut was on 13 October 1934 in Paris. The siblings performed in the New York Town Hall and Queen’s Hall in London, and Hephzibah gave solo recitals in many of the major cities of Europe and America. The siblings performed together in the New York Town Hall and Queen’s Hall in London.
In March 1938, after a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, Bernard Heinze, well-known Australian conductor, and musician, introduced Hephzibah and Yehudi to the Australian brother and sister Lindsay and Nola Nicholas, heirs to the Australian ‘Aspro’ pharmaceutical fortune. In quick succession, Yehudi, aged twenty-one, married Nola, and Hephzibah, aged seventeen, married Lindsay, abandoning her plans to give her debut recital in Carnegie Hall New York. She and Lindsay moved to a grazing property, ‘’Terrinallum” near Derrinallum Victoria, where she spent the next thirteen years.
She established a travelling library for children and she and Linsay had two sons. However, while she curtailed her musical career, she did not entirely abandon it. She played with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras and she and Yehudi played together many times during his 1940 Australian tour. She gave solo recitals and supported local activities such as the Griller Quartet – a British musical string quartet who were particularly active from 1931 to 1961. She was involved with Richard Goldner in the foundation of Musica Viva Australia in 1945. She befriended many displaced European musicians who had emigrated to Australia. Her marriage and that of her brothers ended in divorce. Hephzibah’s own two children remained with their father.
In 1947, Hephzibah played at the Prague Spring Music Festival in a concert organised by a Melbourne businessman, Paul Morawetz and during her touring of Europe, she and Paul visited Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia an experience that affirmed her Jewishness and forced her to confront the meaning of her Jewish heritage, prompting a realisation that had enormous consequences for the rest of her life. It also exposed her to how she saw the smallness of her Australian life. Questioning her political, religious, and social assumptions, she began to speak out and write about progressive causes, including education and women’s issues. Paul encouraged her interest in left-wing ideas and politics. Hephzibah was a glamorous hostess and contemporary sources describe the parties, often with impressive guests like Sir Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh, in 1948. The National Film and Sound Archive has a recording of Olivier and Leigh from the time reciting Banjo Paterson, apparently to debunk the idea that only local voices were suited to delivering the rhythm of Australian verse.
In 1951 she and Yehudi played at the opening of the Royal Festival Hall in London, then made a concert tour of Australia and played and broadcast for the ABC. She supported all types of causes with concerts and recitals, such as the National Music Camp Association, and she was outspoken about the influence of television on children. In 1954, Hephzibah moved to Sydney, where she gave concerts and opened her home to anyone in need.
She met and became involved with Richard Hauser, an Austrian Quaker sociologist and social commentator who had moved to Sydney with his family, then wife Ruth Hauser, and their daughter Eva Cox, a well-respected Australian writer, feminist, sociologist, and activist. Hephzibah divorced her husband and married Richard in Sydney in 1955. Two years later the couple moved to London with their daughter where they fostered a boy of mixed Welsh and Nigerian background. Hephzibah was also a linguist and writer, co-authoring several books and writing many papers with Richard.
They founded the Institute for Human Rights and Responsibilities, and the Centre for Group Studies, and later moved to Friends Hall, a Quaker settlement house in Bethnal Green, in the East End of London. They later ran a human rights refuge from their home in Pimlico. This also became the base for The Institute for Social Research, which Richard ran until his death. They worked on small-step conciliation and attempted to help minorities across the world. She was a passionate supporter of women’s and children’s rights.
In 1977 Hephzibah became the President of the British Chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom an organisation which throughout the twentieth century persisted in its mission of opposing war and striving for political, economic, social, and psychological freedoms for all. Together Richard and she wrote “The Fraternal Society”, a book about ‘social reform advocated through community action, arousing mature individuals to reject the “father figure” of authoritarian patterns of living’.
In 1962, 1970 and 1975 she and Yehudi again toured Australia with the Menuhin Festival Orchestra. In 1977 she was a member of the judges’ panel for the first Sydney International Piano Competition and in Melbourne that year, at a concert where her son, Dr Marston Nicholas, made his public debut as a cellist. In 1979 Hephzibah made her last Australian concert appearance, playing with Yehudi and the Sydney String Quartet. She appeared with her brother for the last time at the Royal Festival Hall in London in November 1979.
Hephzibah died in London on 1 January 1981, following a lengthy illness. Yehudi dedicated his Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall concerts in February of that year to her memory.
The annual $8,000 Hephzibah Menuhin Memorial Scholarship for young Australian pianists was established in 1980. It is administered alternately by the University of Melbourne Faculty of Music and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The soloist’s dressing room at the Melbourne Arts Centre’s Hamer Hall was named in Hephzibah’s honour. In 1998 Curtis Levy produced and directed a documentary on her life and a biography An Exacting Heart was published in 2008 by Jacqueline Kent.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Jacqueline Kent; Wikipedia; Jewish Women’s Archive; National Film and Sound Archive; National Library of Australia; Beginning with Esther – Lysbeth Cohen
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