Isolde Menges

Isolde Marie Menges (16 May 1893 – 13 January 1976) was an accomplished English violinist who was most active in the first part of the 20th century.

The daughter of George Menges, a native of Germany, she was born in Sussex, England. Her parents both played the violin and operated a music school. Menges became a student of Leopold Auer and Carl Flesch. She concertised widely, as soloist and with the Menges Quartet (founded by her in 1931) and Quintet, in locations such as Darmstadt (at 14 years of age), Liège, Wiesbaden, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and throughout England, Scotland, Canada and the United States.

Her Quartet gave a complete cycle of Beethoven quartets in Wigmore Hall in London in 1938, and another in Oxford.

She gave concerti with noted orchestras and conductors such as the New Queen's Hall Orchestra conducted by Henry J. Wood), and London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, and the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1916 she played the Brahms Violin Concerto and Édouard Lalo's Symphonie espagnole with Ernest Bloch.

During World War I, because her German heritage brought her loyalty into question in England, Menges toured North America from 1916 to 1919. She gave more than 100 free concerts for children in Canada.

In 1920, she married the composer Harold Tod Boyd; the couple had one child.

While living with friends in Kelowna, Canada, during the winter and spring of 1918, Isolde Menges gave daily private lessons to child prodigy Isobel Murray, who later became one of British Columbia's leading violinists.

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