Yehudi Menuhin was a boy prodigy who went on to become a great humanitarian and a champion of music as a force for good in the world.

Born in New York of Russian emigr parents, he had an isolated and intense upbringing under his domineering mother. By his early teens, he was astonishing the world's musical capitals with his inexplicably mature and insightful performances of the great vilin concertos.

His tone was rich and warm and his style spontaneously expressive. His 1932 recording of the Elgar concerto, with the composer conducting, made when Menuhin was 16, remains a classic.

During the Second World War, he gave more than 500 concerts for the troops, culminating in 1945 in a performance for the liberated inmates of Belsen.

In later life, Menuhin set up music schools, was a patron of hundreds of good causes, preached peace and forgiveness, practised yoga, performed alongside the jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli and the Indian classical sitar player Ravi Shankar, conducted and, finally, suffered a gradual technical decline as a violinist.

Both Bartok and Walton wrote sonatas for him. Resident in London since the Fifties, Menuhin was knighted and made a life peer. He died in 1999, aged 82.

-Roger Moodiman, Marine Parade, Brighton