There are two films that have left indelible impressions in my memory bank.  The first is a 1957 feature film directed by Stanley Kubrick called ‘Paths of Glory’ which tells the story of three randomly picked soldiers in the First World War who are court-martialled for cowardice during a suicide mission. The second is a 1998 documentary directed and produced by Curtis Levy called simply ‘Hephzibah’.  Oddly enough there are parallel similarities in each. The Kubrick feature is about man’s inhumanity to man whereas the 1998 documentary delves into one person’s attempt to alleviate man’s inhumanity to man. 

Hephzibah Menuhin was 3 when her elder brother, Yehudi made his first public appearance as a solo violinist with the San Francisco Orchestra Symphony in 1923.  Yehudi was seven years old. None of the Menuhin children had any formal schooling and Hephzibah was taken out of her school (she only spent 5 days there) and taught to read and write at home.  Her mother, however, made sure that she was taught to play the piano. 

Hephzibah made her recital debut in San Francisco in 1928 at the age of 8. A critic described her as “half-imp, half-angel”.  At 13 she and Yehudi waxed their first recording (a Mozart sonata) which eventually won the Candid prize as recording of the year. A year later, on October 13th 1934, she played in Paris.  Performances with Yehudi in New York and London followed plus she also gave solo recitals in most of the major cities in Europe and America.  Yehudi, in his autobiography, said of his sister when they first started performing together that they had: “matured into music and revealed that we had a Siamese soul.” 

Hephzibah’s father, Moshe, was a former rabbinical student and her mother, Marutha, was described as dominant and controlling.  When Yehudi’s talent was blossoming Marutha stipulated that she didn’t want Hephzibah to follow in her brother’s footsteps and rejected a musical career for her, but she was not averse to Hephzibah playing second fiddle(!) to her brother by accompanying him on the piano.  At the time, Marutha said of her daughter: “Hephzibah yearns for solo recitals and a career of her own…. I tell her that the only immortality to which a woman should aspire is that of a home and children.”  Later she added:  “I always praised Hephzibah for a well-balanced and executed meal than for a concert she might ever play!”

The family travelled extensively in Europe and performed in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.  From 1928 until 1935 the family lived in Basel, Switzerland.  Eventually they settled in Los Gatos, California and in 1939 Hephzibah was offered her first appearance as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic.  It was in one of the tours that they met (Sir) Bernard Heinze in London. He introduced them to Lindsay and Nola Nicholas in March 1938. Lindsay was a wealthy Australian sheep farmer who lived in Derinallum, Victoria and the heir to the ‘Aspro’ pharmaceutical fortune.

Hephzibah, married Lindsay on 16 July 1938 in a civil ceremony at Los Gatos.  He was 21, she was 18. Hephzibah wrote to her sister Yaltha and alluded that she was marrying “an Australian shepherd”.  It was a perfectly normal marriage except that it was Hephzibah who proposed to Lindsay…and it wasn’t even a leap year!  Perhaps Hephzibah was impatient to rid herself of the clutches of her mother’s influence; perhaps she felt she could not face the prospect of living in the same house as her mother now that Yehudi was about to leave the homestead too.  Yehudi married Lindsay’s sister, Nola, that same year.  

As the Sydney Morning Herald described in an article on 3 August 2006, Hephzibah was “a woman who based her life on never taking the easy option, (and) she may have arrived in Victoria wanting only to be a good farmer’s wife, but other distractions intervened.”

At first Hephzibah relished her new found life and freedom in country Victoria.  She continued to give concerts in Melbourne and other parts of Australia and, at the same time, fostered war orphans, refugees and even pioneered a travelling library for children.  They paid one penny per borrowed book, the returns paying for the petrol used for the running of the library. She, with the help of Richard Goldner was also instrumental in the foundation of the Musica Viva Society, an institution that is still running now.  She championed women’s rights and education and continued to write and speak about progressive causes.

At the same time she was changing life in the Derrinallum country farmhouse (about 550 kilometres from Melbourne) into a centre for intellectual diversity.  Guests to the farmhouse included not only her brother but the likes of Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh. She also held a ball on the property and the proceeds bought books for the local schools within a radius of 150 kilometres and were delivered fortnightly by farm truck!  Meanwhile she bore two sons, Kronrod and Marston.

But within a few years Hephzibah was tiring of living the life of a sophisticated farmer’s wife.  Her left-wing ideas led her to Melbourne, where she played a few recitals, and met a businessman, Paul Marowitz, who became her lover from 1946 to 1949.  Meanwhile she was also performing charitable concerts throughout Australia and fostering war orphans and refugees from the Second World War

1947 turned out to be a defining year for Hephzibah.  While on a tour with Yehudi to the USA and Europe she visited the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia and was thoroughly moved by her experience.  It brought out her Jewishness and made her feel that she should be doing more to help the disadvantaged. She began to be more vocal about her social, religious and political beliefs and the (then) delicate issues of women’s education. 

This led to her leaving Nicholas and Derrinallum for Sydney in 1954 where she met up with Richard Hauser, a Viennese-born Jewish refugee who had a passion for social and humanitarian causes.  Richard already had a daughter, Eva who is still with us and who continues her father’s work in Sydney and is now known to us as Eva Cox.

Hephzibah divorced Nicholas on 10 November 1954 and married Hauser in a Sydney civil ceremony on 22 April 1955.  In March 1957 they left Australia and, with their daughter Clara, settled in London.

Hephzibah continued to perform but her time was mostly devoted to helping Richard with his work.  Supported in part by donations from wealthy philanthropists they embarked on counselling and aiding ethnic minorities, prison inmates and victims of domestic violence, providing social surveys for the British Home Office, helping and encouraging the peace movement in India and establishing human right centres in Northern Ireland.

In truth, although their efforts were sincere and worthwhile, people who worked for them found their aims too divergent and lacking focus.  Richard had a good head for ideas and original concepts but he lacked the vision on how to implement them successfully. They tried to encourage individuals to alter their destructive patterns of behaviour, but lacked the expertise on how to achieve it.

As part of their attempts to show their social consciousness they turned the bottom part of their two storey house in Bethnal Green into a refuge for the needy, refugees and battered women.  Later they moved to Pimlico. Their doors never closed and some took advantage and burgled the interior. Even Hephzibah’s piano was not spared.

In 1962 she and Yehudi toured Australia and again in 1970 and 1975.  In 1977 she was part of the judging panel for the first Sydney International Piano Competition.  That same year Hephzibah played a concert in Melbourne at which her son, Dr Marston Lindsay, made his public debut as a cellist.  In 1979 she performed her last concert in Australia and that same year appeared with Yehudi for the last time at the Royal Festival Hall.

Eventually, all her hard work took its toll.  She developed cancer of the throat and died on 1 January 1981.  A piano scholarship was established in her memory at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, and a chair in piano studies at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem.

It is difficult to put into words what I feel about Hephzibah.  If she’d been born a Catholic I’m sure she would have been a candidate for canonisation.  Her life though chaotic when tabulated in less than a page and a half, was nevertheless full of fulfilment for her and whoever she touched.  Her empathy for the downtrodden was characteristic of a warm person and one with undiminished love for humanity and yet…… and yet what did she achieve?  Did she make the world a better place to live? Except for the piano competitions in her name all we are left with is the memory of a life of self-sacrifice and contradiction.  On the other hand when we die who will remember us besides a few friends and relatives.  At least Hephzibah Menuhin has left us a bit with more than that.

If I have piqued your curiosity with this short precis of Hephzibah Menuhin’s amazing life, I would urge you to read Jacqueline Kent’s splendid biography of Hephzibah entitled “An Exacting Heart”. The film that set me off to explore the amazing life of Hephzibah, by Curtis Levy is entitled simply “Hephzibah” and is readily available for a small fee on YouTube.

Featured image- Hephzibah and Yehudi Menuhin