A pregnant Jewish immigrant, stung by a New York landlady who casually announced she would not rent to Jews, vowed her child would wear his heritage so loudly he could never be caught off guard again. She named him Yehudi, meaning the Jew. This episode follows that boy, born in 1916, from a solo debut in New York at 10 and a spellbinding Berlin performance of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms at 12, to a life spent using the violin to dissolve the very boundaries his name was meant to draw.

We examine how Menuhin avoided the prodigy burnout trap by seeking demanding mentors like George Enescu and Adolf Busch, how he performed for survivors at Bergen-Belsen in 1945 with Benjamin Britten, and why he chose just two years later to play in Berlin under Wilhelm Furtwängler, a decision that drew fierce criticism. From there the conversation moves to his ...