Ida Haendel, violinist virtuoso described as ‘fire and ice,’ dies

Ida Haendel, the Polishborn prodigy with a fiery sound and unassailable technique who became one of the foremost violinists of her generation, died July 1 in Pembroke Park, Florida.

Haendel had been ill with kidney cancer, said her nephew Richard Grunberg, who confirmed the death, in a nursing home.

Her age was a matter of debate. According to her British passport, she was 91; her nephew said she was 96. He said she had a birth certificate that her father had produced in London to prove she was 14, to avoid a minimumage rule for paid concerts. Promotional materials on other occasions gave different ages to make her appear younger.

A student of noted pedagogue Carl Flesch and composer, pianist and violinist George Enescu, Haendel was a living link to an early-20th-century school of violin playing centered on simmering sound and dramatic phrasing.

In lyrical passages, her ardent vibrato and swooping portamento lent her playing a strong vocal character, while her articulation in virtuosic passagework could be crisp to the point of percussive.

An example is her 1955 recording of the Brahms concerto with Sergiu Celibidache, a conductor with whom she had a close and sometimes tumultuous working relationship. Her signature piece was the Sibelius Violin Concerto, which she played with a contained urgency that critic Geoffrey Norris in The Telegraph of London once described as “fire and ice” and “mind-blowing.” After a 1949 performance in Helsinki, Sibelius wrote her a letter and congratulated himself “for having found a performer of your standard.”

Until the 1980s, Haendel was virtually the only woman among the top tier of concert violinists. In later decades she complained about being sidelined by younger players in a market that prized attractive new faces. But well into her 80s she embraced any opportunity to play. In a 2004 documentary by Dutch director Paul Cohen, she declared matter-of-factly, “I am the violin.”

Cellist Steven Isserlis, who played Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Haendel and pianist Martha Argerich, said Haendel’s music making always conveyed passion. “It was strong, vibrant, focused and came from right deep inside her,” he said in a phone interview. “She really was the violin — there was no separation.”

Ida Hendel was born in Chelm, Poland, on Dec. 15, possibly in either 1923 or 1928, to Nathan Hendel, a portrait painter, and Faigie (Goldgevicht) Hendel. (Ida later added an “a” to her last name in homage to the baroque composer.) According to her autobiography, “Woman with Violin” (1970), she was 31/2 when she picked up her older sister’s violin and reproduced a melody she had heard her mother sing.

Her father rented an apartment in Warsaw so she could take lessons there, and in 1935 she won the Warsaw Conservatory’s gold medal for virtuosity. She never attended school.

She moved to Paris on the invitation of the great Hungarian virtuoso Joseph Szigeti, who had offered to teach her but was frequently away on tour. Instead, Haendel began to study with Flesch, whom she later followed to London, as well as Enescu.

Haendel, then living there, gave her first Proms concert in 1937 at the Queens Hall, playing the Beethoven concerto under the direction of Henry Wood. Her family was Jewish, and her father, who was in London with her and sensed that war was imminent, arranged for Ida’s mother and sister to join them in Britain. They became British citizens.

During the war, Haendel performed for British and U.S. troops and was featured in the morale-boosting concerts at the National Gallery put on by pianist Myra Hess.

Haendel moved to Montreal in 1952 and several decades later settled in Miami Beach. She lived in a house that she had bought for her father so he could be near writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, a close friend.

No immediate family members survive.