Adila Fachiri was a Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 violinist who had an international career but made her home in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. She was the sister of the violinist Jelly d'Arányi

Jelly d'Arányi

Jelly d'Aranyi, fully Jelly Aranyi de Hunyadvár was a Hungarian violinist who made her home in London.She born in Budapest, the grand-niece of Joseph Joachim, and sister of the violinist Adila Fachiri. She began her studies as a pianist, but switched to violin at the Music Academy in Budapest...

.

Born Adila Arányi de Hunyadvár in Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, her early musical education was at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. She began to study violin when she was ten years old, under Jenő Hubay

Jeno Hubay

Eugen Huber , better known by his Hungarian name Jenő Hubay , was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher.-Early life:Eugen Huber was born into a German family of musicians in Pest, Hungary...

. At the age of 17 she won the artists' diploma, the highest musical distinction in Hungary. She was a grandniece of Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

, and she then studied with him in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 until his death, being possibly the only private pupil he ever accepted. He bequeathed to her one of his Stradivarius

Stradivarius

The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...

 violins.

She first went to England in 1909, and in 1915 she married Alexander Fachiri, an English barrister living in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. By 1924 she had played in public in the chief cities of Hungary, Austria, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands, as well as appearing regularly at London concerts.

Adila Fachiri made a recording of the Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 10th violin sonata

Violin Sonata No. 10 (Beethoven)

The Violin Sonata No. 10 of Ludwig van Beethoven in G major, his Opus 96, was written in 1812, published in 1816, and dedicated to Beethoven's pupil Archduke Rudolph Johannes Joseph Rainier of Austria, who gave its first performance, together with the violinist Pierre Rode...

 with Donald Tovey. She was the dedicatee of the two violin sonatas of Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

, and of the 1930 violin concerto by Sir Arthur Somervell

Arthur Somervell

Sir Arthur Somervell was an English composer, and after Hubert Parry one of the most successful and influential writers of art song in the English music renaissance of the 1890s-1900s....

.

On 3 April 1930, she and her sister gave the first performance of the Concerto for Two Violins of Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

, at a Royal Philharmonic concert at the Queen's Hall

Queen's Hall

The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...

, under the direction of Oskar Fried

Oskar Fried

Oskar Fried was a German conductor and composer. An admirer of Gustav Mahler, Fried was the first conductor to record a Mahler symphony...

. Holst wrote the concerto for them.

The sisters were concerned together in a spiritualistic séance in London in March 1933, at which the existence of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

's Violin Concerto in D minor

Violin Concerto (Schumann)

Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23 was his only violin concerto and one of his last significant compositions, and one that remained unknown to all but a very small circle for more than 80 years after it was written.- Composition :...

was revealed to them through the 'voices' of Schumann himself and of their late granduncle, Joachim.

She died in 1962, aged 73.

Sources

• A. Eaglefield-Hull, A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London 1924)
• R. Elkin, Royal Philharmonic (Rider & co., London 1946).
• J. MacLeod, The Sisters d'Aranyi (Allen & Unwin, London 1969).
• R. Magidoff, Yehudi Menuhin, The Story of the Man and the Musician (Robert Hale, London 1956)