Yfrah Neaman

Yfrah Neaman, OBE (13 February 1923 – 4 January 2003) was a violinist and an eminent pedagogue. He was born in Sidon, Lebanon, to Jewish parents from Palestine. He lived in Tel Aviv until 1932 when he moved to Paris to study at the Paris Conservatoire. After winning the Premier Prix at the age of 14, he studied with Jacques Thibaud, and in 1940 settled in London where he continued his studies with Carl Flesch and Max Rostal.

He taught at the Guildhall School of Music for four decades, and was artistic director of the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. He was also instrumental in the launch of the Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition in 1979, of which he was joint artistic director with Yehudi Menuhin. Among Yfrah Neaman's students were Krzysztof Smietana, David Takeno, Masayuki Kino, Wolfgang David, Simon Fischer, Norman Foxwell, Drew Lecher, Vanya Milanova, Eugene Sarbu, Takashi Shimizu, Valantine Stephanov, Paul de Keyser, Sherban Loupu, Sung-Sic Yang, Gennady Filimonov, Mark Knight, Mihai Craioveanu, and Radoslaw Szulc. His students Mincho Minchev, Eugene Sarbu, Xue Wei, and Sungsic Yang were all first prize winners of the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition.

Yfrah Neaman was a founding member of ESTA, the European String Teachers' Association.

He gave the first performances in Britain of the violin concertos of Walter Piston (1952) and Roberto Gerhard (1955). He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1983.

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