Overview
Biography
Ida Haendel, CBE (15 December 1928 – 1 July 2020) was a Polish-born British violinist. Haendel was a child prodigy. Her career spanned over seven decades. She became an influential teacher.
Early career
Born in 1928 to a Polish-Jewish family in Chełm, her talents were evident when she picked up her sister'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 – for example 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 and performed in Myra Hess' National Gallery concerts. 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 appeared 68 times.
Performing career
Haendel 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.
In 1993, she made her concert début with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2006 she performed for Pope Benedict XVI at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later engagements include a tribute concert at London's National Gallery in honour of Dame Myra Hess's War Memorial Concerts and an appearance at the Sagra Musicale Malatestiana Festival in 2010.
Haendel's violin was a Stradivarius of 1699.
Haendel lived in Miami, Florida, for many years and was actively involved in the Miami International Piano Festival. She died in Miami on 1 July 2020.
Teaching
Haendel's emotive performances have inspired a generation of new violinists, including Anne-Sophie Mutter, David Garrett and Maxim Vengerov.
In August 2012 she was honorary artist at the Cambridge International String Festival. She was a regular adjudicator for violin competitions, including the Sibelius, the Carl Flesch, the Benjamin Britten, and the International Violin Competition. She returned to her native Poland to judge the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznań on a number of occasions, and was honorary chairwoman in 2011.
Honours and awards
In 1991 she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. She received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Music, London, in 2000 and from McGill University in 2006.
