My beloved Violin. Part 2

Nelli Shkolnikova (8 July 1928 – 2 February 2010) was a Russian classical violinist who spent many years teaching in Australia and the United States. She played her first concerto at age eight. In 1953, when she was 25 years old, she was the first woman to win a prestigious Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris . In 1982 she defected to the West in Berlin and settled in Melbourne, where she taught at the Victorian College of the Arts . In 1987, on the recommendation of Isaac Stern, she was invited to join the faculty of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music as professor of violin. She later returned to her post at the VCA in Melbourne. We spoke with her in July 2008 and recorded a program dedicated to her 80th Birthday. In the second part Nelli speaks about her dramatic escape to the West and following work in Australia and USA. Nelli Shkolnikova died in Melbourne, following a long battle with cancer, on 2 February 2010

Nelli Shkolnikova in Melbourne , June 2008 Source: Supplied

Nelli Shkolnikova in Australia, 1983, after defection. Source: Supplied

Source: SBS