Beating the odds.....

One evening in 1927 an 11 year old young boy born a violin prodigy was going to perform the great Beethoven violin concerto in D major. That violin concerto is touted as one of the most demanding concertos emotionally and technically. At 11 years old, the slowly filling up crowd at the New York's Carnegie Hall, majority being highly regarded music critics were expecting the performance to be below standards considering the masterpiece to be too technically demanding for the hands of a young boy to handle.

It all started when this young boy received an invitation from the New York Symphony to perform with them earlier in the year. The invitation was to perform a different concerto - Mozart's violin concerto in A major. Being excited about the invitation, the young boy wanted something and pestered his father to talk the New York Symphony into letting him perform the Beethoven violin concerto. His father reassuringly told the little boy he'll see what he can do to talk to the conductor about changing the song.

The conductor was adamant about letting this young boy play the concerto, however much persuasion by the young boy's manager, the conductor reluctantly agreed to an audition.

On the day of the audition, as the young boy and his teacher walked up the stage to perform for the conductor, the conductor signaled for the teacher to step aside while he played the piano part of the concerto. The young boy's teacher was rather perplexed but allowed the conductor to have it his way.

As the conductor prepared himself on the piano, he gave a long studied look of the young boy while the little one was calmly taking out his violin from the case. The conductor chuckled as the young boy passed his violin to his teacher to be tuned. At 11 years of age, his hands still lack the strength to turn the pegs to tune the violin.

When the boy was ready, the conductor deliberately did not mention where he was going to start from and jumped straight into the final part of the orchestra introduction. The young boy calmly listened and lifted his violin. He raised his bow, and struck the first chord of the concerto. As the young boy played on, the conductor listened to his playing with absolute concentration. Less than 5 minutes into the concerto, he interrupted the song and stood up and held young boy's shoulder firmly and said, "You can play anything with me, anytime, anywhere!"

The first rehearsal with the orchestra was a wonderful surprise to the conductor and the orchestra. The conductor was utterly impressed with young boy's highly detailed playing not missing a single important point of the concerto.

The performance night on 1927 saw the Carnegie Hall packed to the roof. As the famous conductor stepped out to greet the audiences. He was accepted with the applause worthy of only a conductor as great as himself. All eyes however, were to the left as this young boy walked his way to the center of the stage, accepted the applause and handed his violin to the concertmaster to be tuned.

As the orchestra started the introduction of the concerto, the young boy stood unruffled, as if lost in his own world. Some in the audiences were worried he might miss in solo entrance. With seconds to spare, the young boy put his violin under his chin, raised his bow and started playing.

The audience saw in awe the technical proficiency of this young boy, his sensitivity to tonality, the accuracy of his intonation stunned the audience as they watched with complete silence absorbed into his playing.

As the concerto reached the cadenza (it's a section mid-way a concerto that allows the soloist to display his flare and technical proficiency), the audience saw and heard the absolute harmony of spirit and muscle. When the young boy finished playing the cadenza, the audience could no longer contain their excitement and simply applauded, almost interrupting the performance. The performance continued with the orchestra joining the young boy to complete the remaining parts of the concerto.

When the performance ended, the young boy was given a standing ovation , some in tears of appreciation, even orchestra members stood up to give this young boy their respect. The audience could not stop applauding him, that he had to come out numerous times from backstage to accept their applause.

Music critics who entered the hall earlier in the evening having expected to pen this young boy to oblivion for having chose to play Beethoven's violin concerto could not help but to applause the young violinist.

The very next morning, a music critic wrote in the New York Times, "I had come to the hall convinced that a child could play the violin no more effectively than a trained seal. I left with the conviction that there is no such thing as an infant prodigy but that there is such a thing as a great artist who begins at an early age."

That young boy playing the violin is Yehudi Menuhin, and the conductor who performed with him is Fritz Busch. Yehudi ultimately beat the odds, exceeding all expectations.

~Path of Time~ by Micky Foo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.