Holidays for Strings

"He rises with the sun and stands on his head. I ask him upside down what he wants for breakfast, and it's the usual oats, wheat, fruit, yogurt. Then he's off and running. He doesn't have a schedule--it's a palimpsest."

Diana Menuhin was not exaggerating. More like an Olympic sprinter in training than a 48-year-old violin virtuoso on tour, Yehudi Menuhin stays religiously in trim with yoga and health foods. Not that he is in any danger of getting fat. The busiest, fastest-moving musician on the international festival circuit, Menuhin has performed in some 50 concerts from Tel Aviv to Glasgow this summer, has also fulfilled a dizzying round of recording, teaching and conducting engagements. The crescendo comes each year in June and August, when Menuhin presides over two top-notch festivals, at Gstaad in Switzerland, which he himself inaugurated and directs, and Bath in England.

Rare Fare. Menuhin insists that his supercharged summers are actually periods of rejuvenation, a chance to play new works after the long winter rounds of touring with standard repertory. This year Menuhin, who totes around a suitcase crammed with untried compositions, has performed a wide range of pieces that he has never before played in public, including several world premieres. At last week's Gstaad Festival, held in a picturesque village high in the Swiss Alps, capacity crowds jammed a 17th century church for a program of rarely heard Spanish chamber music, which Menuhin and a handpicked chamber orchestra performed from a scaffolding around the baptismal font.

The success of his festivals comes from Menuhin's determined attempts to keep them from succeeding in any conventional sense. Performers are scantily paid, audiences are limited, and the programs are the rarest of musical fare. They are holidays for strings. He regards the meeting of musicians at Bath and Gstaad as "private festivals for Yehudi and friends, with the public tolerated--it's very much a family affair."

A Guru, Too. Performing with Menuhin and rehearsing at his $150,000 chalet at Gstaad were the family's four concert pianists: Sisters Hephzibah and Yaltah, Brother-in-Law Joel Ryce" (Yal-tah's husband) and Son-in-Law Fou Ts'ong, 24, who defected from Red China in 1959 and married Yehudi's daughter Zamira two years later. Also present at the get-together: Menuhin's favorite guru, B.S.K. lyengar, from Bombay.

Despite Menuhin's disregard for audiences, the Bath and Gstaad festivals are more popular than ever. "People are ready for such a novel approach," he says. "Besides, it's the only thing that prevents musicians like myself from getting stale." Menuhin is brimming with new projects, most notably London's Yehudi Menuhin School for musically gifted children, which he founded last year "to preserve our species from extinction." Last week the itch to move along was upon him again. Gazing up at the snow-veined mountains, he mused: "Pretty soon we will be traveling again . . . linking, bridging, weaving."

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