Hephzibah Menuhin 1920-1981

Her music-making continued. In 1951 she and Yehudi played at the opening of the Royal Festival Hall in London, then for J. & N. Tait they made a concert tour of Australia. Hephzibah continued to support all types of causes with concerts and recitals, and she played and broadcast for the ABC. In Sydney she scored an enormous success as soloist in Juan José Castro’s piano concerto, with the composer conducting. She also gave her support to the National Music Camp Association. Never afraid to express her sometimes contentious opinions, she grabbed headlines like ‘Noted Pianist Calls Television “Gruesome”’ – ‘US television had had the same bad influence on the American child as radio, films and comics. Children in America have lost the art of entertaining themselves. They sit by the television set watching horrible, blood-curdling serials, and chewing gum. They are lazy, lethargic, and completely lacking in initiative’. Her passionate extra-marital life became even more public when she became involved with Richard Hauser, a Viennese sociologist and social commentator who had moved to Sydney with his family. She left her husband and children, eventually divorcing and marrying Hauser in Sydney in 1955; two years later they moved to London with their daughter, Clara.

In London the Hausers established their Centre for Human Rights and Responsibilities. Their home was always open to vagrants and other down-and-outs. Hephzibah was also active in peace and disarmament causes. In the late 1960s she and her husband set up a home for the deprived in the depressed London dockland area of Bethnal Green. They sheltered unmarried mothers, homeless families, discharged convicts and young delinquents. In 1977 she was made president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which campaigns for complete disarmament by all nations.

And always there was music. In 1962 she and Yehudi toured Australia under the joint management of J. & N. Tait and the ABC. With Yehudi and his Menuhin Festival Orchestra she toured the United States and Canada in 1967 and Australia, for J.C. Williamson Ltd, in 1970 and 1975. In 1977 she was back to join the judges’ panel for the first Sydney International Piano Competition and to play for the Soirees Musicales Society in Melbourne at a concert at which her son Dr Marston Nicholas made his first public appearance as a cellist.  

In 1979 Hephzibah Menuhin made her last Australian concert appearances, playing with her brother and the Sydney String Quartet. In The Australian, reviewer Peter Burch observed: ‘Yehudi and Hephzibah have been making music together for a lifetime, and they perform with all the ease and distinction that comes with a secure partnership. Yet…there is no suggestion of bland familiarity. One senses that responsibility for sustaining the structure of a piece rests increasingly with Hephzibah’s less introspective approach.’ She appeared with her brother for the last time at the Royal Festival Hall in London in November 1979.