Ida Haendel

Ida Haendel, CBE (born 15 December 1928) is a British violinist of Polish birth.

Born in 1928 to a Polish Jewish family in Chełm, her talents were evident when she picked up her father’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.

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