Yehudi Menuhin used to say that I fell into his lap as a baby. Life in 1970s South Africa had become intolerable for my parents, thanks to the apartheid regime. We lived in Durban, where my father co-founded the literary magazine Bolt, publishing poems by writers of many races. From that moment on, his phone was tapped and they were under permanent surveillance. They had no option but to leave the country. My father was only offered an exit permit. This meant you could leave but never return.

They settled in London, where very soon their money ran out. We had nowhere to go. My father, Christopher Hope, was a struggling author. He went on to win the Whitbread Prize, but back then anti-South African sentiment in the UK made it very hard for him to find work, even though he was fiercely anti-apartheid. My mother supported us with part-time secretarial jobs. At the 11th hour, facing calamity, we had some incredible luck. An employment agency offered her a compelling choice of jobs: secretary to either the Archbishop of Canterbury or the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. She had no musical training, but she loved music and admired Menuhin, whom she had heard perform in South Africa.

Coincidentally, my parents had also heard the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Coggan, preach in South Africa and had been shocked that he did not actively denounce apartheid – so she would never have taken the job with him. The interview with Menuhin lasted two minutes. He asked if she knew the difference between Beethoven and Bach. When she said yes, he asked: “When can you start?” My mother’s association with Menuhin lasted 24 years, right up until his death in 1999.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When can you start?’ … Menuhin in Paris in 1980. Photograph: Francis Apesteguy/Getty Images

Our lives changed immediately and for ever. I was two and, for the next eight years, practically grew up in Menuhin’s house in Highgate, London, where my mother would take me to play while she worked. Although we had only just settled in London, Menuhin asked her to come to his summer festival in Gstaad for two months. Her concerns at leaving her family were swept aside. “I would never separate a mother from her family,” Menuhin said. “Bring everyone with you.” And that’s what she did.

I was a kid who could never sit still, so my mother was very surprised to see me silent on the hard pew of the church where rehearsals took place, intent on the music. I was surrounded by artists of all kinds, so in a way it was no surprise when I announced to my parents at the age of four that I wanted to become a violinist.

When Einstein heard him play, he said: 'Now I know there is a God in heaven!'

The violin was a part of Menuhin. To this day, his sound remains in my ear, so unique and so fascinatingly beautiful. He’d leave his Guarneri del Gesù, a priceless violin made in 1742 and known as the “Lord Wilton”, in an open case on the table; he never put it away. He picked it up and played it almost as if he were drinking a glass of water. He once told me: “One has to play every day. One is like a bird, and can you imagine a bird saying, ‘I’m tired today – I don’t feel like flying’?”

How do I begin to summarise a career that spanned 75 years and made him one of the greatest musicians in history? Perhaps with his debut in 1924 in San Francisco at the age of seven, or maybe his performance in Berlin in 1929, which prompted Albert Einstein to exclaim: “Now I know there is a God in heaven!” Or his legendary recording of the Elgar concerto under the composer’s own baton in 1932. Then there’s his visit to the liberated concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen with Benjamin Britten in 1945; and his highly controversial decision to return to Germany in 1947, where he performed with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, the first Jewish artist after the war to do so.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch the trailer for the album My Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin by Daniel Hope

Only seven of Menuhin’s 82 years were not spent on the road. He adored playing and travelling. His wife almost always accompanied him, his children less so. Musically, I learned from him constantly, just happy to have the chance of observing him close up. But it was also testing – an education in the fierce, peripatetic life of the soloist and the kaleidoscopic world of hotels, stages, airports and orchestras they inhabit. The cities to which I was introduced delighted and alarmed in equal measure. Menuhin had been on the road since he was still in shorts, though, and was an expert.

Along with a gentleness that masked an iron will, Menuhin’s humour was inexhaustible. On one occasion, my father was entrusted with taking his Guarneri del Gesù on an Alitalia flight to Rome. Menuhin was at the front of the plane and went straight to the VIP room. When we got to passport control at Fiumicino airport, I asked my father where the violin was. My father looked at me with shock and came out with an expletive. He had left the violin in the baggage compartment on the plane. He ran like an Olympic sprinter back on to the runway and up the stairs of the aircraft – you could do that in those days. When Menuhin heard about the incident, he giggled like a little boy. Thanks to some kind carabinieri, he got his violin back after a tense half-hour – tense for my father, anyway.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Menuhin with Wilhelm Furtwängler (right) in Berlin. Photograph: Ullstein Bild via Getty Images

I had a few lessons from him as a very young boy, but our real collaboration began when I was 16. By that stage, I had had my own teachers, in particular the great Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron. Menuhin was curious to see what Bron had been able to achieve with the “boy next door”. His reaction was a mixture of shock and delight, and he suggested we perform together. Over the next 10 years, we played more than 60 concerts around the world: I played, he conducted. The works included Mendelssohn’s early D minor Concerto, which Menuhin famously discovered in 1951, and also many works for two violins, such as the A minor Double Concerto by Vivaldi.

On 7 March 1999, I played Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto in Düsseldorf, conducted by Menuhin. It was to be his final concert. After the Schnittke, Menuhin encouraged me to play an encore. I spontaneously chose Kaddish, Ravel’s musical version of the Jewish prayer for the dead. I had grown up on Menuhin’s interpretation of this work and wanted to dedicate it to him. Menuhin pushed me out on to the stage and sat among the orchestra listening to it. Five days later, he passed away.

