Einstein's Violin

Leora Cohen and Paul Wingfield, along with distinguished actor Harry Meacher, present Einstein's Violin, a one-hour, costumed musical drama for narrator, violin and piano written by Paul Wingfield. Einstein famously remarked that, had he not pursued science, he would have been a musician. Einstein’s Violin transports the audience to the parallel universe of the great man’s alternative career as a violinist. On Monday 11 April 1955, Einstein is in his study at his Princeton home writing a radio address for the NBC. His violin, ‘Lina’, is, as always, by his side in her battered old case. Einstein becomes distracted, opens the case and tells his life story as a musician, from his first violin lessons at the age of 5, through his music-making in Zürich, Prague and Berlin, to his involvement in the USA in benefit concerts to raise money for refugees from the War in Europe. Along the way, he recounts his interactions with a panoply of leading cultural figures and performing musicians of the first half of the twentieth century. On a deeper level, he describes his voyage of discovery of his identity as a European Jew, shaped above all by his experiences in pre-War Berlin and by the Holocaust, and he grapples with the fundamental questions of the morality of war and the existence of God. The narrative is underscored by music for violin and piano that essentially forms the soundtrack to his life, incorporating, in addition to original music, reimagined versions of works played at his funeral and his memorial service, and of other pieces that profoundly influenced him. The heart of the show is a complete performance of Einstein’s favourite work, Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E minor (1778), which he performed memorably in Princeton in January 1941. A vibrant and innovative fusion of one-person play, melodrama and instrumental recital, Einstein’s Violin presents a unique insight into the inner life of the twentieth-century’s most celebrated scientist. This performance will take place in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre in Trinity College, Cambridge, at 7 pm on Sunday 23 November 2025. It will be preceded at 5 pm by a one-hour lecture Paul on one of Einstein's actual 1894 violin, which recently sold at auction for more than £1m, and which Paul helped to authenticate.

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Host or Publisher Cohen-Wingfield Duo