Early Life
Hephzibah Menuhin was born in San Francisco. Through her father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty. Her mother Marutha has been described as "dominant and controlling". The Menuhin children had little formal schooling. Hephzibah spent only five days at a San Francisco school, where she was classed as educationally backward. Her parents took her out of school and taught her to read and write at home. She started studying the piano at the age of four and gave her first recital in San Francisco in 1928 when she was eight. She then studied with Rudolf Serkin in Basel and Marcel Ciampi in Paris. In 1933 she and Yehudi made their first recording (a Mozart sonata), which won the Candid Prize as best disc of the year. Her public debut was on 13 October 1934, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The siblings performed in the New York Town Hall and Queen's Hall in London, and Hephzibah gave solo recitals in most of the major cities of Europe and America.
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